Ginette Spanier 
It Isn’t All Mink: The Autobiography of Ginette Spanier, Directrice of the House of Balmain 

Ginette Spanier discovered her talent for ‘selling very expensive things to very rich people’ at Fortnum and Mason in the 1930s. This uninhibited and amusing account takes her from hiding in occupied France to the world of haute couture, as Directrice of the House of Balmain from 1947 to 1976 and friend to stars of stage and screen including Laurence Olivier, Marlene Dietrich and Vivien Leigh.

First published in 1959, this book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

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Foreword by Noel Coward

How I came to write this book

Book One – Upbringing

1. Paris

2. London

3. Shop Girl

Book Two – Life on the Run

4. French Doctor’s Wife

5. The Unlovely Riviera

6. Notre-Dame de Bellecombe – a New Life

7. Better thank Chambery

8. With the German Army

9. The Ride Through German Lines

Book Three – Liberation

10. I Join the American Army

11. Leave in England

12. The Nuremberg Trial

Book Four – Out of War and into Couture

13. Pierre Balmain

14. Mannequins and Madness

15. To Sell or Not to Sell…

16. Customers and Criminals

17. Madame La Directrice

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Ginette Spanier was Directrice of the House of Balmain from 1947 to 1976