Sew good creations and real prosperity in 1890s Paris

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Based on the fictional story, loosely based on the Chanel sisters of the time:

It was an ordinary time in 1890.

The painting Paris Street; Rainy Day shows Dublin Square as seen from Moscow Street in Paris, France, by Gustave Caillebotte in 1877.

Well, at least for me it was.

I was enjoying a lemon pastille as I walked down the boulevard rue Cambon in Paris. My journey had taken me from the orphanage in Vichy where I had been told by the nuns that I would never amount to anything and I would be lucky to marry a merchant. The merchant, of course, would take me out of poverty and move me into respectability.

My very spirit told me otherwise and I was determined to prove them wrong.

My sister’s latest letter informed me that she had enough money for both of us to travel to Paris and make our fortune selling hats. I knew we both had learned to sew and I thought it was entirely possible. So we took a morning train on a cool September day. To make our mark in the world.

We had acquired a mentor who would give us a line of bank credit to open a small shop and to begin to live our dreams. We bought rugs and chandeliers and hat stands and prepared the front of the showroom for customers.

We sewed day and night new creations. Some with ostrich plumes and some with velvets and lace. We had the creative touch to make hats of distinction. We created hats for the comte, for the marquis or the baroness. Soon we became the talk of Paris.

We read Decourcelle stories or the Lives of the Saints. Or even a St. Francis prayer card. We lived on hope and dreams. We enjoyed “le quatorze juillet” which was a holiday to commemorate the storming of the Bastille prison.

We forgot that our mother had died and our father had abandoned us. He lived a nomadic life peddling kitchen pots and herbs or men’s shoes. He was a seducteur. A man without morals. We forgot the past. We lived for our future.

We watched the elegante stroll down the Champs Elysees with a gentleman on her arm and a bright parasol on the other. We wanted to see what the rich would wear and how they would behave in society so we could emulate them in our shop. Fashion was ever changing in Paris and we wanted to be new and novel with our designs.

As Fate would have it, we met interesting gentlemen, bachelors, with means, and we began to date them and spend evenings at the Moulin Rouge, drinking champagne. The tango was becoming popular and we learned the dance and spent our evenings dancing and drinking. There was even a Tango Special train from which the seats had been removed and people could dance during the ride from Paris to Deauville and back again. We enjoyed river cruises on the Seine and strolling around the Montmarte district, wondering, hoping. Always aware of new ideas for our hats. We were successful.

Our lives took on an effervescence that could hardly have been predicted. We opened a new boutique on a more fashionable Paris street and from the moment we opened, the salon was full of high society women wanting a new chapeaux.

On a café terrace with the sun warming everything, we laughed at our good fortune brought about by hard work and creativity. We took our tea from dainty china cups and ate morning buns. We had arrived and our bank account proved it.

We were no longer the poor, abandoned, girls raised by nuns who did not believe in us. We had come to believe in ourselves.

We had wings.

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