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Selling Beauty Martin, Morag Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Martin, Morag. Selling Beauty: Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society, 1750–1830. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.3456. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/3456 [ Access provided at 1 Oct 2021 08:28 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. SELLING BEAUTY The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 127th Series (2009) 1. Monique O’Connell, Men of Empire: Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State 2. Morag Martin, Selling Beauty: Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society, 1750–1830 Selling Beauty Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society, 1750–1830 MORAG MARTIN The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore This book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of the Karl and Edith Pribram Endowment. © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2009 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 246897531 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Martin, Morag. Selling beauty : cosmetics, commerce, and French society, 1750–1830 / Morag Martin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8018-9309-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8018-9309-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Cosmetics industry—France—History. I. Title. HD9970.5.C673F866 2009 381Ј.4566850944—dc22 2008048621 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. All of our book papers are acid-free, and our jackets and covers are printed on paper with recycled content. contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 The Practices of Beauty:The Creation of a Consumer Market 12 2 A Market for Beauty: The Production of Cosmetics 32 3 Advertising Beauty: The Culture of Publicity 52 4 Maligning Beauty: The Critics Take on Artifice 73 5 Domesticating Beauty: The Medical Supervision of Women’s Toilette 97 6 Selling Natural Artifice: Entrepreneurs Redefine the Commerce of Cosmetics 117 7 Selling the Orient: From the Exotic Harem to Napoleon’s Colonial Enterprise 134 8 Selling Masculinity: The Commercial Competition over Men’s Hair 155 Conclusion 174 Notes 183 Bibliography 207 Index 223 This page intentionally left blank acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the help of a large number of peo- ple. I am grateful to my dissertation advisor Tim Tackett at the University of Cali- fornia, Irvine, who provided a supportive and critical eye. I would like to gratefully acknowledge my debt to Colin Jones for inspiring the topic and then following me through to the end. Maxine Berg provided me with a research space and postdoc- toral fellowship at the University of Warwick Eighteenth Century Centre. The Lev- erhulme Fund Special Research Fellowship helped me finish old strands of research and open new ones on the history of masculinity. Since 2000, the History Depart- ment at The College at Brockport, State University of New York, has been a highly welcoming and supportive environment for both a first job and writing my manuscript. Thanks to colleagues who have helped me by reading my work, listening to my arguments, or giving me advice: Mary Salzman, Hazel Hahn, Peggy Waller, Cathy McClive, Dena Goodman, Tim Hitchcock, Natasha Coquery, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Catherine Lanoë, Caroline Fontaine, Katie Scott, Claire Walsh, Elizabeth Eger, Melissa Hyde, Melissa Percival, Michael Kwass, Robin Walz, Mary Gayne, Jenny Lloyd, Greta Niu, Carolyn Johnston, Lynn Sharp, Michael Lynn, Jem Axelrod, Christopher Forth, and David Kuchta. I would like to acknowledge especially the friendship and advice of Jean Pedersen, Rebecca Earle, and Yuki Takagaki. My research trips to France would not have been possible without the support of family, friends, and institutions. Claudy Toche, Jean-Noel Sanson, Marie-Pierre San- son, Karine Sarant, Lynn Sharp, and Marie-Paule Deslandes gave me their hospital- ity. My thanks to the Musée internationale du parfum and the Musée Fragonard in Grasse for allowing me access to their collections. I am also especially grateful to the archivists at the Archives de Paris, the Academie de médecine, the Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Paris, and Valérie Marchal at the Institut national de la pro- priété industrielle. In the final stages, Eleanore Dugan did an invaluable read-through of the whole manuscript; my father sharpened my writing, while my mother corrected my French. I picked the Johns Hopkins University Press because I had been told Henry Tom was a wonderful editor to be rejected by, furnishing useful advice for revision and alternate presses. He has proved to be an exceptional editor to be published by, along with the rest of the staff at the Press, especially Suzanne Flinchbaugh and Andre Barnett. viii Acknowledgments Part of chapter 4 and the conclusion were originally published as “Casanova and Mlle Clairon: Painting the Face in a World of Natural Fashion,” Fashion Theory Jour- nal 7, no. 1 (March 2003): 57–78. Chapter 5 was in part published as “Doctoring Beauty: The Medical Control of Women’s Toilettes in France, 1750–1820,” Medical History 49 (Spring 2005): 351–68. A much shorter version of chapter seven appeared as “French Harems: Images of the Orient in Cosmetic Advertisements, 1750–1815,” The Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 31 (2003): 125–37. Finally, for their constant support, I thank Carl Almer, Beatrix Almer Martin, and Rosalia Almer Martin. This book is dedicated to them. SELLING BEAUTY This page intentionally left blank introduction France has the well-earned reputation of being a center of luxury and fashion. His- torians looking for the roots of high fashion have found key starting points during Louis XIV’s reign in the seventeenth century and in Marie Antoinette’s personal pro- clivities at the end of the eighteenth.1 Despite this long history of luxurious excess, France is also the home of the radical revolutionary ethos; extremist Jacobins tried in the 1790s to destroy all representations of the frivolous Old Regime. The period from 1750 to 1830 that this book covers is one of disjuncture and change in the rep- resentation of France, fashion, gender roles, and ideals of beauty. This period starts with the extremes of Louis XV’s court and ends with the simpler styles of respectable femininity during the Restoration. Court aristocrats in the 1750s wore thick layers of paint and rouge, while their Romantic counterparts wished to be naturally pale. Yet, despite this radical shift in fashion away from visible artifice, in the same period, French beauty culture transformed itself from an aristocratic luxury to a strong and vibrant sector of the economy. The eighteenth century was first a century of artifice in court and in elite circles. From the reign of Louis XIV came lavish wigs and codes of dress. Louis XV’s court was more frivolous; women’s colorful silks grew in width, and men’s wigs were powdered. Under Louis XVI, hair grew taller for women, while men luxuriated in flouncy sleeves. By the 1780s, the ideals of the Enlightenment reversed these trends, pushing fashion toward simpler dress touched by nature, illustrated by Marie An- toinette’s Hameau at Versailles and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s portraits of mothers and children. During the Revolution, honest self-presentation became essential to join the fraternity of citizens. With republicanism came the increased demarcation of fashion as a feminine and private pastime. Men were expelled from the toilette, adopting instead British-styled suits that presaged the development of the modern three-piece suit. The Revolution politicized fashion and emphasized transparency of presentation, while the Directory and Empire literally exposed women’s bodies in see-through white sheaths to evoke antiquity.2 Focusing more specifically on the history of cosmetics, scholars have stressed the ways in which the use of face paint paralleled changes in the general use of fashion. Makeup gained great acceptance by the middle of the century, and then its popu- larity started to decline. The stark white skin, brilliant red cheeks, and black silk patches of Versailles were replaced by naturally flushed skin and an open, honest countenance free of artifice. By the 1760s, the use of makeup by men was on the decline, and by the 1780s, women outside the court eschewed rouge and turned to 2 Selling Beauty antiquity for their models of beauty. During the Revolution, natural fashions tri- umphed, and even afterward, cosmetics did not return to their Old Regime promi- nence.3 The nineteenth century is often described as the century of repression, pal- lid faces, and respectability. Most historians of cosmetics have assumed that this was the end for makeup—leaving only actresses and prostitutes to wear rouge—until its slow rehabilitation in the twentieth century due to industrialization and mass marketing.4 While the downfall of paint is a compelling story, which fits well with the history of fashion, this book suggests that it is a superficial one. I focus not only on the anecdotes of elite use and the admonitions of journalists and advice writers but also on a broad range of archival sources and marketing tools to uncover the development of a complex and expanding beauty culture.

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