Of all the unexpected gifts this job has given me, perhaps the greatest one is the opportunity to be a visitor in the worlds of design and fashion. Anyone who has been allowed entree into a realm they never knew well (but were always curious to know better) understands that much of the fun of that introduction is learning about the culture of the place — the rituals and traditions that members of that tribe have long since ceased to find extraordinary.
For example: Last year, I was talking to a dear friend, a fashion designer in Paris. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I have to finish the hats for the Catherinettes,” he said, so matter-of-factly that, for a moment, I wondered if my inability to decipher what he was saying was actually a sign of my ignorance.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
It turns out that, every November, most of the French fashion houses participate in the St. Catherine’s Day festival. St. Catherine is the patron saint of, among other special interest groups, single women and, back in the 1940s and ’50s, the day was celebrated by 25-year-old female couture assistants putting on whimsical or outlandish hats and wandering the streets of Paris, announcing to one and all that they were looking for a husband.
Today, some things about that tradition have changed or been updated — men, called Nicholases, are now included; no participant can be older than 25 (men used to become Nicholases only when they turned 30); the Catherinettes and Nicholases can come from any kind of fashion house, not only those that make couture, and don’t have to work in the design ateliers — but it endures. There are still extravagant hats, many designed by the maisons’ artistic directors, typically in yellow and green, the colors associated with St. Catherine (no one can agree on why). The honorees, usually among the lowest-ranked, newest members of the houses, still get the afternoon off. (Dior even throws their employees a ball.)
On the Covers
Of course, being 25 in 2025 isn’t the same as being 25 in 1955. Many of these employees aren’t looking for spouses — now, or maybe ever. But St. Catherine’s Day is a reminder that even the most serious businesses — and fashion is serious, despite some appearances to the contrary; some might even call it self-serious — make time for silliness. And not just silliness but sentiment. The French are rightly proud of the influence and power their fashion still carries on the global stage; this celebration is as much one of the next generation as it is of the industry itself.
It’s also a reminder that what makes any closed-door artistic community special is the peculiarities that it has cultivated over the decades. “Oh, how wonderful!” said one New York stage manager I told about the Catherinettes; at the time, we were working on a piece about the traditions of Broadway theaters. “I never knew that.” She’d just finished telling me about some of her world’s rites; she was tickled to hear about someone else’s. Who knows? Maybe your business isn’t as boring as you think. Maybe it’s actually deeply weird — and you’re the only one who doesn’t know it.
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