Parisian fashion

“ Probably it is more deplorable in proportion as it takes on attractiveness; but we are not moralizing, merely stating facts, and the fascination of the great Parisian demi-mondaine is a well-established fact.
To begin with, she is the best dressed woman in the world. Any of the famous dressmakers of Paris, who are the world's arbiters of fashion, will tell you that. She has the money and the taste, and with her, even more than with the Parisienne of the beau monde, being charming is a metier. She supplements natural attractions with every resource of art. ”

“ I think this is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the least trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses in the way of his own class, and for his own comfort. In London, on the contrary, the fashions descend; and you never fully know how inconvenient or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see it in its last descent. It was but the other day, on a race-course, that I observed four people in a barouche deriving great entertainment from the contemplation of four people on foot. ”

“ I have paid particular attention to foreigners, their customs, their education, their tastes, and I have been convinced that today the Parisian woman has had to yield to the American in respect to clothes and fashion. Paris designs are intended for the United States, not for France or England. The Frenchwoman may be trim and neat and jaunty, but it takes a woman of wealth in France to be in the fashion, while in New York, every shopgirl wears cheap editions of the latest styles. ”

“ This applies, however, chiefly to the few American fashion leaders, and a radical Parisian mode seldom achieves actual popularity in America before late in the season or perhaps the following season. The models have been brought over and shown, have been bought and worn by the knowing and courageous; but the great crowd of American women is slightly conservative and hesitates to take up any radical Parisian fad until after the novelty has become somewhat familiar through being exploited by the ultra-fashionable few. ”

“ In the privacy of their homes the women, as a rule, are untidy and slatternly. They are exceedingly fond of dress, and, to the best of their ability, copy the Parisian fashions; but their natural want of taste seldom fails to make itself evident in toilettes of glaring and ill-assorted colors, while their hands, arms, and necks are overloaded with jewelry. Out of doors they are shod with boots of Parisian manufacture, on whose high heels they totter along the badly-paved streets ”

“ 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. ”

“ To pass from the houses to their inhabitants, the population of Paris is as remarkable for variety as that of London for uniformity of costume. For in Paris almost every class has its own distinctive dress. In England, and especially in London, the employer and his workmen, the millionaire and the crossing-sweeper, wear coats of the same pattern. In London, again, every work-girl, every market-woman, wears a bonnet imitated more or less perfectly from those worn by ladies of fashion. ”

“ A fashion here does not last a week, before it is succeeded by another novelty; for a French woman of bon ton, instead of wearing what is commonly worn by others, always aims at appearing in something new. It is unfortunately too true, that the changeableness of taste and inconstancy of fashion in France furnish an aliment to the luxury of other countries; but the principle of this communication is in the luxury of this gay and volatile people.
You reproach me with being silent respecting the bals masqués or masquerades, mentioned in my enumeration of the amusements of Paris. ”

“ What a mass of civilising detail is contained in these few words!—the leisure to desire, the elegance to wear, the genius to invent, the benevolent employment of delicate hands, the trades encouraged, the soft influences—the very atmosphere breathes the most delicate perfume of loves. It is not to the purpose to interpose that this Paris of fashion suddenly turned savage, and revelled in brutal revolution, sparing not man nor woman. ”

“ The enormous establishments of ready-made men’s clothing seem not yet to have made their destined impression in the direction of uniformity. The contrast in dress of the working classes with those of Paris is as conspicuously unfortunate æsthetically, as politically and socially it may be significant; ocularly, it is a substitution of a cheap, faded, and ragged imitation of bourgeois costume for the marvel of neatness and propriety which composes the uniform of the Parisian ouvrier and ouvrière. ”

“ I was quoted, copied, extolled, admired, and that by the best company in Paris, that is to say, Europe, the world. The women partook of the general infatuation; the most charming disputed for the pleasure of coming to some very select fetes which I gave; and everywhere, and always, nothing was heard but of the incomparable elegance and exquisite taste of these fetes, which the millionaires could neither equal nor eclipse; in fine, I was the Glass of Fashion. This word will tell you all, my father, if you understand it. ”

“ Although Paris may be accounted the soil in which almost every fashion takes its rise, its influence [Pg 174] is never so general there as with us. They study there the happy method of uniting grace and fashion, and never excuse a woman for being awkwardly dressed, by saying her clothes are in the mode. A Frenchwoman is a perfect architect in dress; she never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out a squabby Doric shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to general fashion only when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Paris, the fashions have their dawnings, their routine, and declensions, and depend as much upon the caprice of the day as in other countries; but there every lady assumes a right to deviate from the general ton as far as will be of advantage to her own appearance. In America, the cry is, What is the fashion? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many of those same American exponents of feminine types draw badly [Pg 32] enough to shock the clever young Frenchman, but they would marvel at his pride in his fashion work,—for he is proud. He recognizes the importance of his metier.
It is this popular attitude toward things sartorial that has made Paris the centre of the dressmaking world. The great dressmaker may be born anywhere, but even a sartorial genius, born to dressmaking as the sparks fly upward, will not come into his artistic heritage outside of Paris. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The streets are adorned with many fine shops, where every European luxury is obtainable for money. Tailors and milliners are very fond of parading flourishing sign-boards in French, and even in that remote corner of the world, Paris is looked to as the seat of fashion. ”

“ The English and French style of dress, both among men and women, prevails not only in the higher classes, but through all others, and in every part of the city. Huge Parisian bonnets, full set with broad ribands, are seen in every street ”

“ No dressmaker is now considered orthodox who cannot show a prefix of Madame, and the rage for foreign materials and workmanship of every kind is as ludicrous as in England.
Although the deception practised is very blameable, there is some comfort in knowing that large numbers of the caps, bonnets, mantles, and other articles of dress, which are marked ostentatiously with the name of some Rue in Paris, have never incurred the risks of an Atlantic voyage. But however unworthy a devotion to fashion may be, it is very certain that the ladies of New York dress beautifully, and in very good taste. ”

“ Ah, the very walls are saturated with gossip in the salons where Fashion makes her headquarters, and when an old customer disappears, when a new luminary arises, even the curtains flutter with interest and conjecture.
Stars of a certain type rise and set swiftly in Paris. Of a sudden, there is a new sensation. Some woman by force of beauty, wit, diablerie, sheer audacity, has caught the public eye. All Paris talks of her, men pour fortunes into her grasping little hands. She eats and drinks and is exceedingly merry. ”

“ People whose knowledge of France is, say, ten, perhaps fewer, years out of date would accept this without a thought, and yet one is inclined to think that the Frenchwoman's pre-eminence has gone. No doubt all that is truly chic, all that is essentially dainty in feminine attire, emanates from the brain of the Parisian, but the women of the French capital no longer have any monopoly in the wearing of clothes that give charm to the wearer. ”

“ Paris, as the center of fashion, is greatly indebted to him, who gained in his line world-wide fame, and for nearly half a century he has been universally recognized by his competitors and the fair sex as master of his art. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Duties upon the importations are of course tremendous, and during certain months the New York Custom House is so choked with French chiffons that there are maddening delays in getting the boxes through.
Paris would miss les Americaines if they should suddenly lose their interest in French clothes, but there's no danger of that event. Paris is the fashion centre and will continue to be the fashion centre. As for our women—each year they grow more ardent in their worship of the Vanities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But to-day, a change of taste and the dictates of fashion which outweighs even the advantages and conveniences of life, have caused them to be almost forgotten and relegated them to the ante-rooms of a few county houses where some of the earliest are to be found, nearly as beautiful as when they were first made in Paris. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most prodigal patrons of the great dressmakers and jewellers in the Rue de la Paix are Americans, but the most brilliant figures in the fashionable Parisian world are French. The born Parisienne is the supreme coquette. ”

“ Charms as fresh as those of Hebe, beauties which might rival the feminine softness of those of Venus, while they bespeak the vigour of Diana, and the bloom of Hygëia, are the advantages which distinguish many of the Parisian belles of the present day, and for which they are, in a great measure, indebted to the freedom they enjoy under the antique costume.
In no part of the world, perhaps, do women pay a more rigid attention to cleanliness in their person than in Paris. ”