Heritance

“But Robbie darling, fantasy is everything.”

Juliette Gallian, née Parineau, [1900-1974] was my maternal grandmother and a major influence throughout my earliest years of drawing. Designing under her signature “Juliette of Hollywood” line, she was mostly renowned for her dramatic evening and bridal gown collections. Shape and color were always of paramount importance in her fashion work. Upon seeing my first architectural renderings when I was six she instructed: “Look for the shadow, Robbie. Always see where the sun shines, and then you will see the shadows follow.” She said it with the thickest of French accents, her long dark hair pulled back in a tight chignon, her elegant fingers retracing the lines I had just drawn.

Juliette Parineau was born in Paris, studying dressmaking before immigrating with her family to San Francisco in 1916. Later marrying my grandfather and moving to Los Angeles, where she began her Couture line for an increasingly famous clientele, her influence reached its apex in the 1940’s, when top Hollywood starlets routinely wore her hand-painted, intricately detailed gowns for major evenings on the town. Later she designed Prêt-à-Porter collections for some of America’s top department stores, until upon being widowed in 1954, when she moved to Fresno to open a bridal salon, working there with pleasure until illness ultimately forced her retirement. What always remained were a keen sense of balance and drama in all of my grandmother’s work-- and the sense in me that a creative career in the arts was humanly possible.

“It is only through the best possible workmanship
that a designer’s ideas can successfully be
carried out.”
-- Juliette Gallian

3 Generations of Artists

A View into Juliette's Portfolio, s.v.p.