I opened my atelier at twenty-two. I dressed women for forty years.
This is what they taught me — and why I finally wrote it all down, darling.
Lyon. A grey mother and one red glove.
My mother wore grey all her life. On Sundays she wore one red glove — just one, as if she were allowed a single sentence. She died in 1975 with her best dress still in the wardrobe. That is where my first rule comes from: wear your best dress on a Tuesday.
Paris, at sixteen. Chalk and stools.
I came to my aunt Hélène with one suitcase. She wore pearl earrings to buy bread; I thought it was vanity, it was discipline. For six years I was an apprentice to Madame Roux on the rue du Bac — only stools in her workroom, chalk on every hem. She taught me that you always dress somebody else's body, never the one in the magazine. Marcel, the cutter next door, taught me that a cuff shows exactly a matchbox of shirt.
My own atelier, at twenty-two.
I bought my first scissors with my first wage. I owned three good things — a coat, shoes and a bag — and ate soup four nights a week. Nobody ever noticed the soup. Everybody noticed the coat.
The opera. Husband number one.
Black velvet, red gloves. He waited at the door with his watch in his hand. Within a year I kept a lipstick in the hallway, so I could leave on time and still look like myself. The lipstick outlasted the marriage.
A camel coat for a girl who couldn't afford it.
Fifty years later I found it at a flea market — with my note still in the pocket. Good cloth outlives everybody's plans.
An American in a grey suit.
A trade fair in Paris. A young man from Ohio in the saddest grey suit I had ever seen. I told him he dressed like a mortgage. He went out and bought a navy one. I hear he owns forty suits now.
Provence. Husband number two.
He liked that I cooked in silk. We married in the middle of the nineties. I still wear his white shirts.
Sixty, and silver.
My sister looked at me and said, "Margot, you've disappeared." She was right. I stopped colouring my hair and started dressing the woman I actually was.
The last fitting.
I sold the atelier at sixty-five. My last client was eighty-one. As she left I told her, "Darling, you're the luxury. Dress like it." I've said it ever since. Then I had my first scissors cast in gold, with a pearl on the pivot. I wear them every day.
My first pair of atelier scissors, in gold.
Rubies on the rings, a pearl on the pivot. On my left lapel, every day — on the beach, on the ribbon of my hat. A signature tells people you've decided who you are.
The winter I stopped.
For one winter I didn't bother to get dressed. Then I made a rule: dressed by eight, every day. I haven't missed one since.
Seventy-five, and "comfortable shoes".
My granddaughter took me shopping for comfortable shoes. We came home with navy loafers. Comfortable and elegant were never enemies.
Paris and the Riviera.
I swim in the sea every morning, drive an old convertible a little too fast and spend two weeks every September on the Riviera with one suitcase. And I tell women on the internet what I told my clients. Two husbands, one atelier, zero regrets.
Where my rules come from
Things I got wrong
Beige is not a personality.
Expensive isn't a price. It's a posture.
Dress for the woman you'll be at 82.
Darling, you're the luxury. Dress like it.
