Above: Rachel Dorange dressed for town. Although a man's breeches, boots and bowler hat became a kind of trademark for Rachel, she preferred women's clothes and took evening dresses on her various journeys to wear at social events in cities along her route.
Source: H[enri] T[hétard], "Paris-Berlin à Cheval," Le Sport Universel Illustré, December 2, 1927, p. 864. (Bibliothèque nationale de France via Gallica)
3. The Mannequin
Rachel Leonie Dorange was born April 9, 1899, in Fontenay sur Eure, about ten kilometers southwest of Chartres. Her parents were farmers. She was the second oldest of seven children (four girls, three boys). After her father died in 1918, her mother remarried and had one more girl, Rachel's half-sister.
At this point the mystery begins because Rachel divulged very little about her personal life. Some of what she divulged was evidently invented, and some of what she invented changed over time.
In 1943 she told reporter Roger Grison that she was "a model at a major fashion house around 1924" when she would have been 24 or 25 years old, but "she grew tired of this lifestyle after a few months, finding it too inactive for her liking."
In 1946 she gave Yves Rameau a somewhat different version of this episode, recalling that "When she was sixteen the greatest Parisian couturier happened to meet her in Chartres. Dazzled by her beauty he persuaded her to accompany him the same evening to Paris and she became a mannequin in his fashion house."
In a 1951 interview with Qui? Detective magazine the story changed yet again. Instead of being recruited as a fashion house mannequin at sixteen, "I was placed as a salesgirl in a bakery in Malakoff", a Paris suburb. This version was corroborated by Dr. Hervé Ménager, an equestrian in his own right, who spent years delving into Rachel's life and career and interviewing anyone he could find who knew her.
Dr. Ménager's informant was the daughter of a woman named Lucie Chable. Lucie had known Rachel and like her drove a horse cab in Paris during the 1940s. According to what Lucie told her daughter Rachel worked as a delivery girl for the bakery, making her rounds with a horse and cart. Presumably her life on the farm had already accustomed her to managing horses. Lucie had also been a baker's delivery girl.
As with other parts of her life story the evidence for Rachel's modeling career boils down to her own testimony. Dr. Ménager states that she eventually modeled for Jean Patou (1880-1936), a prominent Paris fashion designer who also founded a high-end perfume business that is still in existence. Could this be true, or is it an instance of Rachel's name-dropping that filtered through one or more informants on its way to Dr. Ménager? Patou would have had his pick of experienced Paris models so it seems unlikely that he would have reached over their heads to choose a farm girl from Chartres.
Unlikely, but of course not impossible. Rachel was tall and slender with flame red hair, and newspaper interviews rarely failed to mention her beauty and charm. She definitely had the makings of a model.
Whether or not she modeled for Jean Patou, Rachel actually did work in a Paris fashion house with a model named Madame Nadal. They remained friends after Nadal started her own business as a couturier, though the friendship ended badly (see page 54).
In any case, looking back on her modeling career, Rachel recalled that "In record time the little farm girl transformed herself, with her innate gift of assimilation, into an accomplished Parisian woman who could soon be seen at all social events of the capital."
This was nothing less than the truth. Rachel had an undeniable knack for getting herself welcomed in upper crust circles.