French fashion

“ The people are taking their pleasures, and the people must live. So the world of fashion, when a fair comes its way as it does at Neuilly, makes the best of it with the good-humoured philosophy of France, and goes down into its midst. ”

“ For a long period the world has acknowledged the French to be leaders of fashion. We look to Madame Virot, and other leading modistes of Paris, from season to season, for what might be termed first ideas, but still in all we are obliged to soften down and modify them to suit the more simple taste of American ladies.
Ancient Mourning Costumes, the outward signs of woe and sorrow, have always been demonstrated by some peculiarity in color in all nations. ”

“ III.—FASHION IN DRESS It is very difficult to say what constitutes Fashion. We allow our French neighbours to prescribe what we shall wear, and at certain seasons of the year, English milliners of any pretension flock to Paris to learn their lesson, and on their return to London, announce to the public and to their customers that they are prepared to exhibit the greatest novelties in style, form, and colour, which they have been able to procure. ”

“ When you come to Paris, you may take care to be extremely well dressed; that is, as the fashionable people are; this does by no means consist in the finery, but in the taste, fitness, and manner of wearing your clothes; a fine suit ill-made, and slatternly or stiffly worn, far from adorning, only exposes the awkwardness of the wearer. Get the best French tailor to make your clothes, whatever they are, in the fashion, and to fit you: and then wear them, button them, or unbutton them, as the genteelest people you see do. ”

“ THE caprices of fashion among the French are amazing. They have forgotten how they were dressed this summer; they know as little how they will be dressed in the winter; but, above all, you would never believe how much it costs a husband to dress his wife in the fashion. Where is the use of my giving you a full description of their dress and ornaments? A new fashion would destroy all my labour as it does that of the dressmakers ”

“ It is of the French fashions we speak here; for in France, the land of classic fancy, the empire of fashion, has assuredly been more deeply felt than elsewhere. Even in primitive Gaul were the fashions fixed, but their common sense is to be commended. The Gallic woman was demanded by fashion to follow a strict course of bathing. ”

“ Costume, as readers of Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus know, always has a significance deeper than the mere whims of fashion. In the cosmopolitan society of modern times dress everywhere tends to become assimilated to a common model, and this assimilation, however regrettable from the picturesque point of view, is one of the most potent forces in the break-down of the traditional social distinctions. In the middle ages in Europe, and indeed down to the French Revolution, the various classes of the community were clearly differentiated by their dress. ”

“ By a happy compromise between fashion and fancy, the clever artiste has contrived for them costumes which are marvels of good taste and simplicity. Nothing could be more successful than this metamorphosis; their coiffures complete the picture, and I can hardly recognise my almées under the bewitching little hats worn by our Parisian women. I assure you it is a transfiguration replete with surprises and unexpected charms. ”

“ About the middle of the century quite an outcry arose about the introduction of so many French fashions, and the prints of the day are full of caricatures of French ways and costumes. It was the upper classes who were first seized with this mania for imitation, and the example being infectious, spread rapidly through all ranks of society. ”

“ They are business men or women, their French fellow craftsmen are artists. There is in Paris the same type of dressmaker we have here, but there is, too, the artist dressmaker who is something higher in the scale, and it is through him that Paris is the fountain-head of fashion. There is little original work in dress here. Good workmanship we have. Our plain tailor work, for example, is the best in the world; but our makers are content to copy French ideas and French models and they have no such high standards as have the sponsors of those models. ”

“ The immediate adoption of the French fashions by other nations, is not unfrequently a source of much merriment to the inventors of them, and is a standing topic of amusement and ridicule to the ladies of Paris; for it is not unfrequently the case, that while the prints of costume, as they are prepared by the French milliners and dress-makers, of the most absurd and fantastical models, are seized upon and imitated in the dresses of the English and Americans—these very prints are subjects of sport to the Parisian ladies for their fantastical absurdity. ”

“ Luttrell Society, 1951) , no. 11.
31 E. S. de Beer, “King Charles II’s own fashion,” Warburg Institute Journal (1935) , vol. 2, no. 2, p. 105.
32 Translated, this reads: “. . . nothing is more pleasing than the styles born in France . . . . This is why much relating to dress is imported from France into all the provinces of the world, though the final dress is not exactly French.”
33 Emile Magne, Images de Paris sous Louis XIV (1939) . In this book, the social historian Dr. Magne devotes the best part of a chapter to the Mercure Galant and gives a listing of all fashion articles up to 1700. ”

“ If this predominance of English fashions had been confined to filling our drawing-rooms with young men in English frock-coats, instead of the French dress, good taste and commerce might alone have suffered ”

“ Now we need not go to Paris to ask them whether a coat looks just right with a half-inch or a five-inch collar; we are the judges, and can decide that just as well as anybody else on the face of the earth. I would not swap my eyes with any living person for beauty and comeliness. I would rather trust to my eyes for beauty, excellency and comeliness in dress, than any other person's eyes I know of. We should be our own judges. This, I say, to my sisters. Pause, reflect, look at the facts in the case as regards the folly and expense of fashion. ”

“ The fashions of England and France are not merely matter of fancy: Fancy may dictate new and odd figures in dress; but the general design of frequent and continual changes of fashion, is wise systematic policy, at the courts of London and Paris. ”

“ I mean a style of dress that is artistic as well as picturesque, that satisfies our love of beauty, that accords with the grace of the perfect human figure, and that gives as perfect satisfaction to the cultivated taste as a drawing by Raphael. While all the other illustrations of the human ingenuity in making the human race appear fantastic or ridiculous amuse us or offend our taste, —except the tailor fashion-plates of the week that is now,—these few exceptions, classic or modern, give us permanent delight, and are recognized as following the eternal law of beauty and utility. ”

“ A certain proportion of people, on the other hand, think of style in dress as a sort of self-advertisement, a matter of force and emphasis, a question of flamboyance and the dernier cri. And there are still others who, with a finer conservatism, understand style to be that rare art in dress which effects a perfect compromise between the prevailing fashion and the personality, and which unerringly chooses, in color and in form, the garment best designed to suit, most completely and at the same time most unobtrusively the individual need. ”

“ Its vogue will be precisely proportioned to the merit the popular taste recognizes in it, just as if it were an invention in mechanics. If a new idea in dress has any merit in it, it is taken up with great promptness, for our people are extremely interested in enhancing personal beauty by costume, and the absence of any arbitrary standards of style such as fashion set for you leaves us on the alert for attractions and novelties in shape and color. It is in variety of effect that our mode of dressing seems indeed to differ most from yours. ”

“ Art and the Fashions.—In discussing the parallel between art in clothing and the more stable art of home decoration it must be admitted, of course, that style in dress introduces some embarrassing questions; for the styles, especially for women, suffer wonderful changes with every season. And yet people of artistic feeling and good taste, succeed in maintaining a fair degree of harmony between the changing demands of fashion and the established principles of art as applied in dress. ”

“ Fashion ruled the light literature of France during the first half of the seventeenth century, and through all its diversities, its great characteristic is the absence of all true and serious feeling, and of that inspiration which is drawn from realities. In the productions of half a century, we find not one truly elevated, energetic, or pathetic work. ”

“ Going to market in France means, indeed, what it did with us a hundred years ago; yet the farmers and farmers' wives looked the picture of prosperity. In some cases, fashion had so far got the better of tradition, that the reins were handled by a smart-looking lady in hat and feathers and fashionable dress, but for the most part by toil-embrowned homely women, with a coloured handkerchief twisted round their heads and no pretention to gentility. ”

“ The best artists design them, and the only fault to be found is this, that as they are made by thousands of yards, and can only be varied by interchange of colours, they become common the day they are produced. It has been said that “fashion is made for a class, but taste for mankind.” [478] Fashion is the enemy of taste, though she makes use of her services. The gown, of which the fashion is in every sense imported from France, will probably never again be the vehicle for home embroideries. ”

“ She had the rare gift of knowing how to embellish nature, how to bring forth all the capacities of a face and form, and how to modify the fashion of the day to the requirements of the wearer, instead of slavishly following an arbitrary mode, and thereby sacrificing all individuality of beauty. Dress became high art in her hands. ”

“ We all know that the love of beauty is inherent in all women—just as the pride of personal appearance is inherent in all men. It is a heritage brought down through generations of slowly developing culture. And we find to-day that Fashion is the means of expressing individuality.
It would indeed be a Herculean task to attempt to write a discourse on the ever-changing dictates of Fashion, on the constant whims and vagaries of Style. Each season brings forth striking new dress innovations—new colorings, new draperies, new lines. ”

“ And these millions of changes have, each and all, had their admirers, and every fashion has been, in its day, called beautiful. It is evident, therefore, that the reigning fashion, whatever it be, comprehends the essence of the agreeable, and that to continue one particular mode or costume, beautiful for successive ages, it would only be necessary to keep it fashionable. Some nations have taken advantage of this principle in the philosophy of dress, and have, by that means, retained a particular mode for centuries ”

“ We have often been told, and by those whose business it is to know such things, that the models created by great Paris dressmakers are not always flashes of genius which come in the night, nor the wilful perversion of an existing fashion, to force the world of women into discarding, and buying everything new. ”

“ But all our dresses being flowing, and in folds, are not suited for doing work; in doing work, they are spoiled and done for. There is such a thing as fashion in the West. Their fashion is in dress, ours in ornaments, though nowadays it is entering a little into clothes also. Paris is the centre of fashion for ladies' dress and London for men's. The actresses of Paris often set the fashions. What new fashion of dress a distinguished actress of the time would wear, the fashionable world would greedily imitate. The big firms of dressmakers set the fashions nowadays. ”

“ As I was beginning, at that time, from one circumstance or another, to imagine that I was in no degree uglier than my fellow mortals, to find out that good looks were prized even in a page, and that a handsome person was not shown to less advantage by appearing in becoming apparel, I took care that the finest of my wardrobe should be displayed on the present occasion, where I was sure of seeing, and in some sort mingling with, all that was bright, and noble, and beautiful, in the French capital. ”

“ If professors would stop and consider the character of women who invent popular fashions of the age they might well blush with shame at their eager attempts to follow the modern styles of dress invented by the wicked leaders of fashion in London and Paris, whence the latest styles of this country generally emanate. ”

“ Charles II., from long residence in France, had much sympathy with fashion, which was beloved of men and women, who patronised the lace collar, the muff, the fanciful buttons, and feathers with equal enthusiasm. ”

“ If these are observed, there is still a wide margin left for fancy and fashion. These may find scope in trimmings and embroidery; the application of which, however, must also be regulated by good taste and knowledge. The physical variety in the human race is infinite; so are the gradations and combinations of color; yet we expect a few forms of dress to suit every age and complexion! Instead of the beautiful, the graceful, and the becoming, what are the attractions offered by the dress makers? What are the terms used to invite the notice of customers? Novelty and distinction. ”