France is, apart from its excellence in cuisine, technology, culture, the arts, scientific research, etc., also synonymous with haute couture. Our viewers thus expected us to regularly feature French fashion on Bonsoir, which we did.
What better choice then, than the fashionista of yore (the late) Yvonne Gulamhusein – Sri Lanka’s best-known and most photographed fashion icon of her day. Darling of the fashion critics, she was an avant-garde fashion leader of her time who carried off her sometimes outrageous creations with great elan.
Yvonne later became a fashion critic and made annual sojourns to Paree “to take in the collections; spring/summer couture collections”, she would relate, with well spaced out and punctuated words. Much to her credit, Yvonne goes on record as being the third Ceylonese girl to fly an aircraft solo. Before her were a Miss Croning and Miss Jennet Vairakiam.
Yasmin Rajapakse, my host on Bonsoir, shares the same boundary wall with El Patio Yveony – the Gulamhuseins’ ranch-style house in Bambalapitiya adjoining Unity Plaza on the Galle Road. Yvonne’s frangipani flowers often fell into the Rajapakse garden and spread their fragrance all round.
Yasmin once planned a Bonsoir Fashion Special, featuring a catwalk collection up in the skies, inside a plane. Yvonne was to be our guest…to comment on this daring exercise…and to share her daring days with Bonsoir.
At the appointed hour one morning, the gates of El Patio Yveony swung open and the French Embassy’s Peugeot drove in with its cargo of Bonsoir cast, crew, and equipment. True to form, she was dressed, très parisienne. This suited us perfectly.
First things first and Yvonne lost no time in charmingly requesting us to pronounce her family name correctly. We were to say “Gulam-hue-sane” at all times, with the two short pauses in between.
“Woff, woff, woff” and in sauntered Chérie, a successor of the Chérie of yore, who leapt into her mistress’ arms. The cameras rolled. There was Yvonne “Gulam-hue-sane”, looking very chic and très française, regaling her Parisian experiences, her heady days at the racecourse, haute couture et al.
She took great delight at relating an incident about a 31st night many years ago. Yvonne had gone to one of Colombo’s balls in a “skyscraper hairdo”. “I wore this conical hairdo which was about a foot-and-a-half tall. I actually had to sit sideways in my car so that it would stay in place. For once in my life, I had to give way to my hair and not to myself,” she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. It was pretty obvious that she enjoyed every minute of it. “The party went on. And, at the stroke of midnight all the lights were switched off. I reached out for my little switch and put it on. And lo and behold my hairdo twinkled in the darkness.” Happy New Year!
On another occasion we invited her to our studio at the French Embassy in Rosmead Place for a special programme on St. Catherine’s Day.
On 25 November every year, unmarried French women celebrate the steadfast resolve of a 14th-Century girl Catherine of Alexandria, today’s patron saint of milliners and couture. Around 305 AD the Roman Emperor Maximinus II who had his eye on Catherine, got her beheaded because she apparently refused to marry him. Nine centuries later, Catherine was declared the patron saint of unmarried women.
On this day, unmarried girls around France wear hats in yellow (faith) and green (wisdom) on their heads – a starched cap on the eldest unmarried woman in town and paper bonnets for the others. They spend the day praying to St. Catherine for a worthy husband. The tradition of hats made Catherine the patron of milliners and launched the term “Catherinette”, meaning an unmarried woman aged 25 or older.
Yvonne loved the idea and said she would bring her hats – the ones with which she wowed the races in Colombo and Nuwara Eliya. We accordingly informed the French Embassy security guards to let our visitor in. It was a hot day and I didn’t bargain for her to arrive w-e-a-r-i-n-g one of those hats! The security guards were impressed beyond compare. Yes, Bonsoir was in the habit of receiving different visitors, but according to them, here was “a nice French nonaa wearing a big hat against the sun…and she even said ko-how-ma-der to us in Sinhalese”.
I didn’t want to disillusion the security guards and so Yvonne Gulam-hue-sane remained a French lady for that day. Bless her soul!
