The man who introduced designer Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel to America in 1913 was from Lafayette (then called Vermilionville), and he had a fashion career of his own. Henri Bendel had a high-end clothing store on Fifth Avenue, and in its prime, it was on par with stores like Saks Fifth Avenue.He is “a name known to many, a man known to few,” writes Tim Allis in his new book, “Henri Bendel and the Worlds He Fashioned.” Born in 1868, he was a key ambassador of American fashion in France, and he wrote a syndicated newspaper column offering fashion advice to women across the nation
But despite the glamour of Parisian fashion, Bendel never forgot his roots. He helped democratize fashion through accessible offerings and clearance sales. He was a product of Louisiana, Allis said. He was educated at what was then St. Charles College in Grand Coteau.
Tim Allis, author of “Henri Bendel and the Worlds He Fashioned,” is doing book events in Lafayette and Baton Rouge soon. The author splits his time between Lafayette and New York City.
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“He was Jewish, but he was very taken in by the Catholic rituals,” said Allis. He helped the priests decorate the altar on high holidays. Outside, the women in his life and the things they wore, Allis continued, that was probably his first introduction to fine fabrics and remained a big aesthetic influence.
He went on to work at a plantation store in Raceland and moved to Morgan City where he worked and eventually took co-ownership of a dry goods store.“Morgan City was so key for Henri’s fate,” Allis said. Bendel met his wife Blanche Lehman and her brother there. Blanche Lehman died within a year of their marriage, and Bendel never remarried. But that relationship is what brought him to New York City. Bendel also spent some time in New Orleans, though, according to Allis, what he did there is now a mystery.
In New York, Bendel made a name for himself first as a milliner then as a retailer. His brand survived him until 2019 when all Henri Bendel stores shuttered their doors. Outside of Lafayette, where Bendel Road and the Bendel Gardens neighborhood bear his name, Bendel is a figure largely lost to history. There were no biographies written about him.
In his new book out Sept. 24, Allis, who is also from Lafayette, seeks to change that. He spoke to The Advocate about the research process and his hopes for Bendel’s legacy.
Tim Allis will be doing a book reading and signing at Cavalier House Books in Lafayette on Oct. 9 at 6 p.m. Admission is free. Those who miss him then can catch him at the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge on Nov. 2.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.How did Henri Bendel get on your radar, and what made you want to write a book about him?In 2009, a friend in Lafayette, Karen Jones and her late mother Denise Jones, a longtime French professor at the Univeristy of Louisiana at Lafayette, spotted Henri’s portrait at the Lafayette Museum. Karen thought Henri was a mysterious sort of unknown character from Lafayette history, and that he deserved more attention, and she said to me that somebody should write a book or article about him. I started digging and got interested ultimately when I realized I’ve never seen a national magazine article or a full book about him, and I thought, “This should exist. Somebody should do this,” and why not me?
Henri Bendel died in 1936 in New York.
What was the book writing process like for you?It was eye-opening. I, maybe naively, thought having written hundreds and hundreds of magazine articles for years and years, that each chapter is like a magazine article, so I just needed to write the equivalent of, say, 12 magazine articles. Wrong.It is a much bigger, more complex thing. I was digging into Louisiana history and the Bendel family history from before he was born in the early-mid 1800s, and I had to report the story through 2019 when the store went out of business. It was a way longer period to research than I would normally do.
It was a long and winding road. I did a lot of digging over quite a few years and picked the project up and put the project down. I had a lot of concerns that I wasn’t finding enough deeply personal information about Bendel to do the really intimate portrait that I wanted to do, but in the end, I found his voice, especially in his syndicated newspaper columns.
While reading the book, I noticed there were quite a few parallels between your life and Henri Bendel’s. Can you talk a little about how/if that influenced your writing?
My family lived in Bendel Gardens on Beverly Drive, but I didn’t have any awareness of who Mr. Bendel had been. I think it was at least in my 20s, before I even realized that our subdivision was connected to this famous women’s store.
I didn’t think about any similarities between me and Henri for a long time. There were some obvious things like we’re both from Lafayette. We’re both gay — and we both lived in New York. But I didn’t really make much of that. After completing the book, I do have a little bit more of an affinity with him.
As a gay man, I’ve tried to imagine myself in his shoes, living in a deeply closeted era, and it’s also reminded me of the extraordinary progress in queer liberation.
I did have some sensitivity to the idea that maybe I was writing about Henri’s homosexuality, which he or possibly some of his descendants might not have wanted written about. Then I realized that thinking is just the vestigial oppression of the closet — and this is the overdue liberation he deserves.
His homosexuality is not the main thrust of this book. I had to own some realities, which is that I don’t know exactly what Henri did or didn’t do in the bedroom, and I don’t know how Henri thought of himself. That’s where you have to recognize that different era is not analogous completely to ours, and you have to just let those mysteries hang in the air. I really have now leaned into sharing with everyone what we know.
As a kid of the ’60s, teen of the ’70s, the closet door was shut tight, and you understood at an early age per all the messaging around you, “Gay was not good.” To watch and be part of that changing has been wonderful, but it’s not complete. We still live in homophobic times in this country and certainly globally.
I feel like Henri and I share space on a continuum, and the last chapters of this story have not been written.
What do you hope people will learn about Henri by reading the book?I hope people enjoy the reveal of an unlikely story. This Jewish gay boy from (Lafayette), who’s of immigrant parents born in the mid-1800s could, in just a matter of less than three decades, place himself in the thick of Parisian couture salons and New York society to become a thriving businessman, a top fashion influencer, make bundles of money, build stunning mansions, travel the world and become the great Henri Bendel. What were the chances?
I hope they appreciate what an original he was. He was that rare thing which is a supreme business person who is also a true artist.
I also hope that they learn a little bit about the Jewish immigrant culture in Lafayette and in south Louisiana, and learn about the dialog between French fashion and American fashion in the early 20th century — that sort of back and forth that Henri was so pivotal in. He was, for sure, the preeminent American ambassador of French fashion who brought Chanel’s dresses to America.
I was really struck by the photo of the Bendel’s Fifth Avenue flagship store which closed in 2019, and you write about how it’s still empty now. What would you like to see in that space?
I would hope that it would be something new and organic and not a chain, not another bank, something fresh and creative — just as Bendel’s was fresh and creative. There’s a crisis in brick-and-mortar retail, and fashion retail has been hit particularly hard.
It’s worth noting that the great, very edgy, cool, pricey Barneys, which was such a hot, influential store, went out of business in 2019 as well. There have been others that have either gone out of business or shrunk. To carry on brick-and-mortar fashion retail, it would be great to see something cool and original by somebody who has a vision the way Henri had a vision.
