Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion

Abstract

In Gilded Age America—where an estimated seventy-one per cent of private wealth was concentrated in the hands of the nine per cent—fashion was both an economic and social engine. Expensive laundry was a form of money laundering: converting sometimes dubiously obtained cash into cultural capital in the form of French fashion. Dressing Up explores the ‘soft diplomacy’ that women of the New World exercised by buying dresses from the Old World—along with art, interior decor and, occasionally, husbands. French garments and ‘fancy articles’ were available in the US as early as the 1840s, imported by local dressmakers who made regular trips to Paris. By the 1880s, thanks to improvements in international travel and communication, American women who could afford it were doing their shopping in Paris, though they continued to patronise stateside dressmakers and department stores. ‘Proxy shopping’ for hometown friends and family was a timeconsuming part of this fashion tourism. Paris was the home of haute couture: luxury fashion custom-made for elite clients. (The French term for ready-to-wear clothing was not couture but confection.) The history of haute couture has foregrounded the virtuosity of the designer, who was often (though not always) male—a narrative that Charles Frederick Worth has, rather unfairly, dominated. Block argues, persuasively, that female clients were ‘active participants in the large, transnational fashion system’—and that American women played a key role in shaping ‘French’ style. Along with their innate good taste, good looks and deep pockets, they brought their ‘entrenched frugality’—a holdover from Puritan provincialism—and ‘high textile I.Q.’ to bear on Gallic genius. Block explores the role of international expositions, which were places to preview the latest in taste and technology, and to see and be seen: visitors dressed to impress. Yet these costly gambits could bring financial ruin as well as good publicity to the fashion dealers who exhibited their wares. Lavish fancy dress balls functioned as extensions of the operas that usually preceded these late-night affairs; costumed guests strutted in vast, empty ballrooms like actors on a stage. These important fashion activations have been covered elsewhere, but Block fleshes out the story, introducing lesserknown names like Madame Olympe, Morin-Blossier (who dressed Princess Alexandra) and Maison F elix, the presumed designer of the black gown worn by John Singer Sargent’sMadame X. Most impressively, Block untangles the fascinating ties between couturiers and coiffeurs, milliners and perfumers. Both hair and dresses were routinely scented, and fashion magazines often identified the perfume as well as the dressmaker, hairdresser and corset-maker responsible for an outfit in a fashion plate. French hair salons advertised ‘American comfort’ and ‘American’ shampoo—that is, shampoo used with water, as opposed to French dry shampoo. Tantalising references to professional hair colouring and ‘the enormous international trade in human hair’ deserve further exploration. As in the eighteenth century, a ‘coiffure’ was a portable commodity rather than an ephemeral fashion statement. Similarly, the reuse of elite dress and lace has deeper roots; only in recent memory has it been taboo to wear a dress more than once, and modern royals and celebrities are pushing back on this for reasons of sustainability. Without sacrificing precision, the book would have benefited from framing these trends in a broader historical context. Though numerous and high quality, the illustrations in Dressing Up ultimately disappoint. The book includes front and back views of several surviving gowns, often alongside portraits or photos in