How to be a gentleman-in the French fashion

Press, 24 May 1985, Page 17

How to be a gentleman-in the French fashion

ROBIN SMYTH

reports from Paris on how

a French gentleman behaves.

Around noon on a Sunday morning you can see them coming out of Catholic churches in the statelier areas of Paris. Their manners are formal — the men bow to kiss hands — and they manage to look very French despite their Harris tweed, Burberrys, and forest-green Austrian Loden overcoats.

They are the French gentry. Their appearance and behaviour — known as 8.C.8.G. — has become the subject of widespread curiosity and imitation.

8.C.8.G. (pronounced Bay-Say-Bay-J’ai) stands for Bon Chico Bon Genre — well-dressed, well-bred. One of the ground rules of being 8.C.8.G. is that you could not care less whether you are admired or even noticed. You have no crusading zeal about pressing your style on the outer world, referred to with unfocused mildness as les gens— people.

Now a new Paris publisher, Herme, is about to provide imitators, voyeurs and upstarts with a guidebook written by an insider. "8.C.8.G.” by Thierry Mantoux,

reviews the customs of this discreet cast from nursery to funeral. Its paraphernalia are listed and so are the shops and couture houses in which they are to be found. The 37-year-old author is the sales director of the extremely 8.C.8.G. Saint-Louis crystal makers, a company founded in 1586. “I wanted to describe something I thought needed describing — it’s like a tribe,” says Mantoux, who has drawn inspiration from the Preppy Handbook in the United States and Sloane Ranger guide in London.

The picture that emerges is of a sober, hard-working tribe with dutiful, well-behaved children. Somehow, early on, the little creatures in their British kilts and tartan Bermudas realise that their world is threatened and they had better not rock the boat. The little girls’ dresses come from Bonpoint. There is, inevitably, some relaxation of discipline and denting of morals in the up-and-coming 8.C.8.G.5. But there is no sign of a break in the sequence, which sees one generation take over the as-

sumptions and tastes of its predecessor with remarkably little slippage.

Apart from isolated pranks there is no teenage revolt against the central 8.C.8.G. institution the rallye. Well-connected families form themselves into groups to hold bridge and danping lessons for their children, and to organise dances for the older ones with a match-making purpose.

Hell-raising and exotic fads in dress and behaviour are out as far as young 8.C.8.G.s are concerned. Any impulse to dazzle, shock, or shake things up strikes them as childish. “They are far too busy being 8.C.8.G. and passing their exams.” Thierry Mantoux says. A potentially rowdier set is vaguely indicated by Mantoux as “the highflying aristocracy.” Even so, for both categories of 8.C.8.G.5, the bonnes families, and, on a higher level, the nobility who may wear their arms on signet rings and have the particule, the “de,” before their names, decorum and unshakeable good manners are essential.

Any desire to display wealth or status is the mark of the plouc — the boastful dolt — or, worse, it is BOF (Bay-oh-Eff). This stands for Beurre Oeufs Fromage — butter, eggs, and cheese — and was applied to black marketeers during the Occupation. BOF means nouveau riches. It is plouc or BOF to have a heated swimming pool and newly-acquired properties in all the fashionable places, and to refer to one’s house as “mon chateau”, even if it is one.

Every 8.C.8.G. dwelling is a maison, and can look very rundown because “it has been in my family for generations.”

The 8.C.8.G. woman has no ambition to be in fashion. The object of the whole family is to dress more British than the British.

The great departure from le look Anglais is the ever-present Loden of Austrian game wardens and exiled hapsburgs which, in green and sometimes dark-blue, is worn by both sexes at all ages.

France provides the coveted emblems of the caste, the Hermes scarf and handbag. Although expensive, they have a discreet, unchanging appearance.

The real objection to haute couture clothes for younger 8.C.8.G. women is that they cost so much. Nothing must be worn which advertises a frontier between the more comfortably-off members of the clan and those who are fauche— broke. Girls can make their own party dresses. The lov-ing-hands-at-home look is better

than a dress which is too elaborate or in forbidden colours — orange or apple green.

There is nothing against an haute couture evening dress for a great occasion. The couture house will know from the look of the customer that she is dressing to merge not to kill. And the rules are eased for older women who are allowed to put on more of a show — to wear a real Chanel suit instead of a copy.

Thierry Mantoux and his wife, Marie-Laure, have three small sons called Aymeric, Gregoire, and Charles. At present these are thoroughly all right names, but names go quickly in and out of fashion. The great thing at the moment is to be Edouard or Guillaume but not, apparently, Edmond or Gilbert. You can be Charlotte, Camille, or Constance but not Claire, Claudine, or Colette.

The Mantoux family ski at Meribel which is the 8.C.8.G. resort. They have an ancestral shooting lodge in the Sologne. But the

Sologne is such a smart place to shoot that it is horribly BOF even to mention it. “I prefer to say ‘south of Orleans’,” Mantoux says.

He speaks fluent English with, of course, an Oxbridge accent, and talks English with the children. The Mantoux boys will be carefully schooled and coached to clear all the educational hurdles up into the Grandes Ecoles, the gateway to the influential future for which the 8.C.8.G. feel they are designed.

When the Socialists came to power four years ago it seemed that the 8.C.8.G. image represented by President Giscard d’Estaing had gone into a long eclipse. Then, last summer, smooth, young Laurent Fabius became Prime Minister.

“Fabius is typically 8.C.8.G.,” says Mantoux.

That the image could work its way to the top of socialism seemed to indicate that it was unsinkable. At the same time there is a

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reaction among part of the French public against disorder towards decorum. Opinion polls show and the prestige shops confirm that economic austerity is good for the luxury trade.

“Many people who are having to tighten their belts find that they can do without slightly better things if they can very occasionally have one enormously good thing. The middle ground of luxuries is being badly hit, but there is a run on the expensive, hard-wearing emblems of the 8.C.8.G. Hermes reports that it is doing unprecedented business.”

A fervent believer in the virtues of his tribe and its exclusiveness, Mantoux feels that, even with his guide, the social climber will only get a small way up the cliff face.

“You can become 8.C.8.G.,” he says. “It takes three or four generations.”

London Observer