1.1: Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel. Advertising campaign for the 1987/1988 fall/winter haute couture collection with Ines de la Fressange. Photo by Karl Lagerfeld, © Chanel. This dress is called lâile enchantĂ© (the enchanted island), a name that evokes the first great festivals given at Versailles by Louis XIV in May 1664. It was also the first collaboration between MoliĂšre and Lully.
CHAPTER ONE
Paris, âCapital of Fashionâ
Valerie Steele
âParis once again the worldâs undisputed fashion capital,â declared the headline of an internationally syndicated newspaper article.1 However, contemporaneously, the Global Language Monitor, which measures the media impact of events, reported: âIn another close battle between New York and Paris, New York took four of the five categories to take the Top Global Fashion Capitals crown for 2017.â2 Yet, according to The New Yorker, there was âangst about Paris at New York Fashion Week,â because several of New York Cityâs âmost prominentâ designers had defected to Paris, âthe most glamorous and competitive of the worldâs fashion capitals.â3
Journalists today clearly expect that members of the public will be familiar with the term âfashion capital.â But when and how was this expression forged? A search for the phrase capitale de la mode in the Gallica database of the BibliothĂšque Nationale de France and other French databases revealed dozens of references to the capital of fashion or fashions or new fashions or feminine fashions, as well as variants, such as center, city, cradle, and homeland of fashion(s).4 The earliest references, of which there are only a few, date from the eighteenth century, such as a definition of âcapitalâ in Le Journal des sçavans (1755):
A Capital is formed in the same way as a City in a Province, with this difference, that the biggest Landowners live in the Capital; that the sovereign Government makes its residence there and from there dispenses the Revenues of the State; . . . and finally that a Capital is the center of fashions that all the Provinces take as models.5 [emphasis added]
Fashion has played an important role in the French historical narrative over the past 350 years, from the court of Louis XIV to the spectacle of the haute couture today. By tracing across time the idea of a fashion capital, I unexpectedly discovered a new way to explore the history of Paris fashion and its evolving significance in the cultural imagination. âWhat makes the capital the capital is the concentration of power,â explains the French historian Daniel Roche, power being defined politically, economically, and culturally.6 Paris has been the cultural and economic capital of France for centuries, and has usually, although not always, been the political capital.7 The extent to which France has exerted âsoft powerâ over other nations has varied considerably over time.
However, in addition to its reputation as the capital of fashion, Paris has often been described as the capital of revolution, the capital of modernity, the capital of art, and the capital of pleasure, not to mention the capital of the nineteenth century. According to the French historian Patrice Higonnet, Paris is âa city of myths,â and myths âgive birth to other myths.â8 A myth, in this sense, is not simply fantasy (or propaganda); it bears some relation to material reality. After all, Paris really has played a very important, perhaps unique, role in the history of fashion, just as it has in the history of world revolution. On the other hand, a myth is not factually true in the same way as a statement like âParis is the capital of France.â Myths entail the interpretation of events, often after the fact, whether the âeventâ is the rise of the haute couture or the fall of the Bastille.
From Royal Splendor to the Spectacle of the Haute Couture
Already by the seventeenth century, French fashion and luxury goods had achieved international prestige, in part because they were heavily promoted by the French state. In 1673, for example, the Mercure Gallant argued that âNothing pleases more than the fashions born in France, and . . . everything made there has a certain air that foreigners cannot give to their works.â9 Notice the organic and, perhaps, aristocratic metaphor: âfashions born in France.â Notice also: There is no mention of Paris, although the city was already the site of a luxury clothing industry and a fashion-forward population.10 In the mid-eighteenth century, we read again: âThey say that France is the cradle of fashion.â11
By 1857, however, the Popular Encyclopedia proudly stated: âParis has been the capital of fashion for three centuries. Since the time of Louis XIV, Parisian adornments had as tributaries all the courts of Europe.â12 Here we see a foundation myth in the process of creation, mixing historical facts with hindsight and hyperbole. Other relevant information is ignored, such as the fact that Louis XIV disliked Paris and the Parisians, and that in 1682, he moved the royal court to Versailles, where it remained until 1789.
The splendor of the court at Versailles undoubtedly contributed greatly to the establishment of French fashion leadership, especially since Louis XIV strategically utilized fashion as an element of his political and economic policy. In many respects, the court (la Cour) and the city (la Ville) were two opposed worlds. However, the âSociĂ©tĂ© de Courâ included both Versailles and Paris, as the nobility occupied both spaces. As Montesquieu observed: âA woman who leaves Paris to spend six months in the country comes back as antiquated as if she had been forgotten there for thirty years.â13 Paris and Versailles were so closely intertwined that they formed, I would argue, a double-headed fashion capital. It was not just a question of fashion leadership, but also of fashion production, since with the exception of silk textiles, which were primarily woven in Lyons, most French fashions were produced and sold in Parisâand even the Lyonnais silk merchants made research trips to Paris to see the latest styles.14 In his intriguingly titled book, Paris, modĂšle des nations Ă©trangers (1777), Louis-Antoine Caraccioli writes:
There is not a Court in Europe where French fabrics are not Ă la mode. They flatte...