The Colour of Fashion at the Salon du Goût Français: A Virtual Exhibition of French Luxury Commodities, 1921–1923

Abstract

This article investigates the use of the Autochrome, an important photographic process invented by the Lumière brothers that produced the most accurate representation of colour between 1907 and the early 1930s, in a government-backed exhibition of French luxury commodities, the Salon du Goût Français. Between 1921 and 1923 the exhibition showed in Paris and undertook two international tours, first to North America and then to Australasia, China, Vietnam, Japan and India. Thousands of objects were displayed, from automobiles to umbrellas, including couture, ready to wear, lingerie, menswear, children's wear and accessories. By reducing the objects to two dimensions on the glass Autochrome plates, the exhibition could be shown in a relatively small venue in Paris, transported to America in a trunk and voyage on a decommissioned battle cruiser to the Far East. Using the trope of Western fashion as a form of soft power mediated by the global reach afforded by the Autochromes, the article proposes that the Salon du Goût Français offered a kind of roving virtual art gallery, a vividly colourful encyclopaedic display of over 2,000 images of luxury manufacturing deployed to restore France's imperial and cultural hegemony as supreme arbiter of taste after the trauma of the First World War.