Luxury, Fashion and the Early Modern Idea of Credit

Klas Nyberg, Håkan Jakobsson, Klas Nyberg, Håkan Jakobsson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000282047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Subtopic: Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Luxury, Fashion and the Early Modern Idea of Credit addresses how social and cultural ideas about credit and trust, in the context of fashion and trade, were affected by the growth and development of the bankruptcy institution.

Luxury, fashion and social standing are intimately connected to consumption on credit. Drawing on data from the fashion trade, this fascinating edited volume shows how the concepts of credit, trust and bankruptcy changed towards the end of the early modern period (1500?1800) and in the beginning of the modern period. Focusing on Sweden, with comparative material from France and other European countries, this volume draws together emerging and established scholars from across the fields of economic history and fashion.

This book is an essential read for scholars in economic history, financial history, social history and European history.

Part I
Paris

The capital of luxury

1 Rational follies

Fashion, luxury and credit in eighteenth-century Paris

Paula von Wachenfeldt

Introduction

THE caprices of fashion among the French are astonishing; they have forgot how they were dressed in the summer; they are even more ignorant how they shall dress this winter; but, above all, it is not to be believed how much it costs a husband to put his wife in the fashion.¹

The astonishment of Montesquieu’s fictional Persian traveller Rica in 1717 illustrates the authority of fashion in Ancien Régime France. Although this style dictate might have been confusing for an Asian foreigner at the time, it was nonetheless a social practice for the Parisian. This craving for bodily adornment required credit facilities that became crucial for the circulation of fashion and luxury in eighteenth-century Paris. The purpose of this chapter is to examine writings about fashion and credit in order to discern, on the one hand, the critique of credit practices in French society, and on the other hand, the social discourse that upheld the important consumption of fashion and luxury goods. I thus aim to explore the discursive mechanisms behind the systematic craving for luxury that made use of credit facilities. The relation between changes of style as a socio-cultural habit and monetary agreements begs the following question: how did fashion and luxury, helped by the credit system, construct and codify Ancien Régime society?

A great deal of research has focused on the networks that surrounded credit in society and not least the conditions of seamstresses and their bankruptcies due to unpaid debts.² The networks involved in the aristocratic consumption of the Parisian hôtels and the important commercial activities of the marchands merciers in eighteenth-century Paris have also been subjects of investigation.³ In addition, microstudies of debt portfolios have been used to retrace the web of creditors and the nature of the given credit.⁴

What we need to consider, however, is the history of ideas about credit, fashion and luxury that might have affected the public attitude towards consumption. In the following, I propose that credit connected to fashionable consumption is the fruit of social ideas and cultural beliefs about the deeply entrenched role of clothing in pre-revolutionary France. This postulation will be examined first in popular plays by Molière and Lesage, and second, in fashion magazines that I maintain conveyed societal values related to sartorial practices. Furthermore, Mercier’s moral and physiological observations of Parisian mores and customs, known as Tableau de Paris, and the memoirs of the Baroness d’Oberkirch about court society constitute other important writings about French eighteenth-century society. Cultural work is an indispensable tool for understanding “the shared ways in which author and public think and discuss the world”.⁵ What is more, the cultural production of an era often reflects its ambitions and struggles and can therefore be crucial in the reconstruction of the social system.

It may be objected here that literacy in eighteenth-century Paris could not have been widespread, and therefore, written sources must have been a privilege of the cultural elite. In other words, ideas about fashion and luxury could not have reached the lower strata, and their magnitude was therefore restricted. Nonetheless, according to Roche, the city of Paris represented a distinct situation where, by the end of the seventeenth century, 85 per cent of men and 60 per cent of women could sign their wills. In 1789, on the eve of the Revolution, the number had increased to more than 90 per cent for men and up to 80 per cent for women.⁶ Could the signing of official documents mean that the signer was able to read in general? And wasn’t, after all, the making of a will a signifier of a privileged act for the better-off?

A simple signature does not necessarily entail literacy, and certainly, the act of making a will confirms a social prerogative. Nonetheless, probate inventories reveal that, around 1700, 85 per cent of men and women servants who survived their partner could sign notarial documents. Around 1789 this number was up to 98 per cent. Moreover, the servants of the city seem to have enjoyed at least a basic education that also improved over time and even signed notes of debts or account books.⁷ This activity revealed by the probate inventories thus indicates a certain knowledge of the social system even in the lower strata. Mercier notes in his Tableau de Paris that his ancestors did not read, while in his time, almost every class could read.⁸ This observation certainly does not distinguish between migrated rural (considered as ignorant) and Parisian (initiated) servants and ought therefore to remain quite general. But, all in all, based on the above-mentioned assumptions, I argue that, with a growing literacy, miscellaneous writings about credit and fashion had an impact on the public opinion. Further support for this argument is that other inventories reveal that books became more popular even among the petit peuple, and workers and shop assistants read nearly as much as their masters.⁹

Since I am examining the ideas of fashion and luxury, and their connection to credit, the gender perspective becomes indispensable. The marchandes de modes who created sartorial magic as much as they provoked social debates on their profession also illustrate well a growing view on luxury and fashion as female concerns. What is more, the retail profession that relied on the principle of credit was also the subject of critique.

Clare Haru Crowston underlines that

[c]redit relations were universal in the garment trades. From the highest noblewoman to the lowliest shopgirl, seamstresses’ clients almost never paid the full price of the garments they ordered. Instead, they made a small initial down payment and promised to pay the rest in instalments.¹⁰

The craving for luxury as an imperative activity in Ancien Régime France entailed, on the one hand, indebted consumers, and on the other hand, the stated bankruptcy of many seamstresses when scores could not be settled entirely. But above all, the social feature at the heart of the credit system laid the grounds for the idea of fashion as a commercial business and a cultural institution during the pre-revolutionary years.

Defining fashion, luxury and credit

The Dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise from 1694 highlights the idea of the limited duration of fashion and the human whim that makes it changeable.¹¹ The Encyclopédie from 1765 stresses the features of ornaments for both sexes that rely on the elements of change and caprice. The view of fashion as a sensitive and foolish trend in society is hence far from being a contemporary view.¹² As to the notion of luxury, its definition from 1694 embraces the aspect of lavishness including the features of clothing, furniture and tables.¹³ Later in the Encyclopédie, Saint-Lambert describes it from different angles, oscillating between the critique led by the moralists against it and its benefits for society. The article demonstrates further the inconsistency in the different presumptions about luxury which results in a correctly nuanced and complex picture.¹⁴

I have argued in an earlier study that the concepts of fashion and luxury should not be mixed in contemporary society as the first one relates to trend-sensitive and mass-produced objects, while the second implies qualified design and a long experience of craftsmanship.¹⁵ This distinction seems to have appeared in the eighteenth century as, in the definitions above, the notion of fashion is based on caprice, whereas luxury focuses on the extravagance of certain material objects. In other words, fashion is change while luxury is superfluous. That said, the metamorphosis of style and fashion in pre-revolutionary France was in reality the luxury of the better-off aristocracy and the middle class. Therefore, both concepts need to be dealt with in this study, but we will also see the transformation of the view of luxury and the new image it embodies due to the impact of fashion.

The meaning of credit that arguably supported the consumption of fashion and luxury in Ancien Régime France is also interesting to bring to light. Le Dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise from 1694 defines credit as based on the good reputation of the borrower that thus allows him to borrow.¹⁶ The features of morality, commerce and personal and real (economic) security appear in The Encyclopédie in 1754.¹⁷ The idea of a good reputation and the ability to meet obligations are central and repeated in 1771 in the Dictionnaire universel françois et latin where credit is defined as a mutual loan based on money and commodities built on the reputation, honesty and solvency of the merchant.¹⁸

All of these definitions underline the common traits of the trust, virtue and reputation of the buyer. Credit thus relied on the immaterial side of human beings as much as the material affair itself. But as credit inevitably generated both commercial and human relationships with the client, merchants could never really clear an account.¹⁹ Credit hence remained a frequent social activity in the trade world of early modern society.

Fashion, luxury and credit in writings

In her memoirs about the court of Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792) and pre-revolutionary French society, the Baroness d’Oberkirch tells us that “bankruptcies were everywhere” and that the empire of fashion endured a big collapse when the “insolent” seamstress of Queen Marie Antoinette, Rose Bertin, went bankrupt.²⁰ In the course of the eighteenth century, debts were a recurrent feature, even in lower-class society. The nature o...