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ADVERTISING AND SELLING FASHION: THE BOCCONI DEPARTMENT STORES’ MAIL ORDER CATALOGS in the 1880s Elisabetta Merlo, Bocconi University ([email protected]) Francesca Polese, Bocconi University ([email protected])

Introduction

This paper investigates the early development of the Italian fashion industry by considering the specific case of at the end of the 19th century. In those years the city was not only one of the most advanced industrial centers of the country, but it also boasted a quite diversified productive environment in which all actors making up the clothing and textile industry were well present. Distribution was largely made possible by the existence of a great number of artisans who manufactured and sold garments and accessories. Starting from the second half of the 19th century, these “traditional” actors were joined by large and modern department stores, the most important of which was the Grandi Magazzini “Alle Città d’Italia” founded by the Bocconi brothers (renamed La Rinascente in 1921, with a new managerial direction and property structure). The creation of a wide market for the products of the emerging fashion industry was supported not only by the attractive window displays and opulent buildings of the department stores, but also by their innovative selling methods and by their catalogs. The latter were especially important in advertising fashion products and accessories, diffusing behavior etiquettes and teaching of sewing, cutting and other techniques essential in the manufacturing process of clothing and garments. This paper analyzes one issue of the mail order catalogs published by the Grandi Magazzini “Alle Città d’Italia” at the beginning of the 1880s and compares it with other sources providing, on the one hand, information on current prices of other typologies of goods in the city of Milan, and, on the other, current wages and family incomes. The fashion items advertised on the department store’s catalog are also compared, as far as prices and styles are concerned, with information concerning clothing and other accessories provided by the main fashion magazines of the time. For sure, catalogs were powerful means of advertisement for

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the department store, which used the colorful images printed in its pages to attract potential customers. However, within the glossy pages of these publications the economic and business historian can find interesting information to better assess and define the role of the department store in the development of the modern fashion industry. For example, mail order catalogs show the extent to which department stores actually departed from traditional retailing and shed further light on their “democratizing” power. The study of the assortment of goods for sale and of the variety of prices gives an idea on the real extent of standardization made possible in 19th century stores. The comparison between the prices of catalogue goods and average incomes makes it possible to test the common opinion according to which the appearance of department stores created a mass market for fashion and clothing products. As we will try to explain, the analysis of the catalogs here considered suggests instead that in the second half of the 19th century – at least in - department stores had not yet singled out a specific market segment and relied instead on a strategy of selling to customers of a miscellany of classes, in which the lower-middle classes probably did not play the major role. The paper is organized as follows: section 1 provides a snapshot of the economic development of Milan in the mid-19th century. Section 2 considers instead the origins of the department store and its evolution until the 1880s, while section 3 focuses on the 1882-1883 mail-order catalog. Some provisional conclusions complete the paper.

1. The Milan of the first Italian department store

Although there is a lack of accurate statistical data, historians generally agree that it is in the second half of the 19th century that Italy started its industrialization process.1 Indeed, a «first coat of paint»2 of industrial activity was laid during the period 1860-1880, providing an initial basis for its definitive reinforcement at the turn of the century. This period saw a growth in the

1 See the debate recalled in V. Zamagni, The economic history of Italy, 1860-1990. Recovery after decline, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993 and G.Federico – J.Cohen, The growth of the Italian economy, 1820-1960, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2001. 2 The expression was originally Luciano Cafagna’s, in an article published in 1973, and it is now commonly used to refer to Lombardy’s mid-nineteenth-century economic development; see L. Cafagna, «Profilo generale della storia industriale italiana fino alla prima Guerra mondiale», in C.M. Cipolla (ed.), The Fontana economic history of Europe, vol. IV, London, 1973.

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major economic indicators, although it must be stressed that this modernization presented strong regional differences, with industry concentrated in the Northern regions (especially Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy, the so called “industrial triangle”). However, although significant when compared to the earlier situation, the modernization of Italian industry before the 20th century must not be overemphasized, even when taking into account the most developed regions. The majority of firms were still active in largely traditional (although rapidly and deeply evolving) sectors, particularly textiles, moreover maintaining strong links with agricultural activities. A clear example is provided by the cultivation of silk cocoons and silk manufacturing – once again concentrated mainly in the Northern regions – which were especially important for the backward and forward linkages provided to industrial activities and for assuring Italy a place in international markets.3 As far as organization is concerned, industrial activities remained largely of an artisan type with a small number of large companies emerging only in the most modern industrial branches. Lombardy, and especially the city of Milan, was one of the chief beneficiaries of this industrial spurt, which almost completely transformed the city into a modern industrial center at the beginning of World War One. The most evident effect of the industrial upsurge was demographic. Between 1859 and 1915 the city’s population nearly trebled (from 232,000 to 658,000), with a particularly strong increase between 1879 and 1889 (from 299,008 to 408,294). This impressive trend was largely fuelled by immigrants who were attracted by the increasing economic prosperity that made Milan a unique case in the Italian economy. Just to give an idea, between 1859 and 1915 the number of commercial enterprises registered in the city grew more than fourfold.4 Although the most rapid expansion occurred in the leading sectors of the Second Industrial Revolution – especially engineering and chemicals -, industrialization didn’t significantly alter the predominant aspects of the traditional urban economy, made of a wide miscellany of tiny labor intensive artisan sweatshops: according to the comparison made by Giuseppe Colombo in 18815, Milan was still more similar to Paris

3 See G. Federico, An economic history of the silk industry, 1830-1930, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. 4 See J. Morris, The political economy of shopkeeping in Milan: 1886-1922, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 12. 5 Giuseppe Colombo (1836-1921) was one of the most important names of the Italian business and political community of those days. Member of the parliament, professor of mechanical engineering at Milan’s Politecnico, founder of the Italian Edison company. Colombo made a comparison between the Milanese and the Parisian industry in a conference held at the Italian National Industrial Exhibition, which took place in Milan in 1881. See F. Della Peruta, Lavoro e fabbrica, pp. 60-61 and A. Lyttleton, Milan 1880-1922: the city of industrial capitalism, in G. Brucker (ed.), People and communities in the western world, Homeward, IL, 1979, pp. 250-

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than to Manchester. This was especially true for the clothing and fashion sector, which was made of a great amount of very small workshops producing clothes and fashion accessories (gloves, hats, shoes etc.). As far as fashion is concerned, like the French capital Milan boasted a well developed and diversified economy of fashion as documented by different kinds of historical sources. Among them, commercial guides - published yearly from the 1840s onwards - provide an extremely analytical picture of the very diversified productive urban environment in which all elements of the clothing and textile industry were present. The industrial census provide an idea of their numerical relevance. The picture provided by the 1881 industrial census – the first on a national level – shows a city in which the beginning of the industrialization process was characterized not by the presence of large factories, but rather by a dense network of small and tiny workshops and by the diffusion of domestic workers who produced goods on account of commercial firms. The number of workers in industrial activities was 68,000 of which 27,000 were employed in sectors where large size factories were dominant. A similar number – many of which were women – was labelled as “assigned to clothing”. This category included a wide assortment of consumer goods produced to satisfy the demand of fashion and luxury products: silk textiles, velvets, ribbons, voiles, knitwear, trimmings and braids, elastic fibers, wool shawls, embroideries and laces, hats, leather gloves, fur coats, linens and lingerie, clothes and shoes. This productive organization was not properly a heritage of pre-industrial times. On the contrary, domestic work and the prevalence of female workforce signalled the beginning of a modernization process that took advantage of decentralization of production and mechanization. Instead of being wiped away by the factory system, this domestic sweating system had been reinforced by the diffusion of the sewing machine.6

288. 6 R. Balestri, Mestieri tradizionali e donne spregiudicate. Le operaie del vestiario a Milano tra lavoro a domicilio e manifattura (1870-1923), in Storia in Lombardia, n. 1 , 1994, pp. 73-105 and S. Ortaggi Cammarosano, Continuità e mutamenti nelle forme del lavoro femminile tra XIX e XX secolo, in M. Antonioli – M. Bergamaschi – L. Canapini (eds.) Milano operaia dall’Ottocento ad oggi, Milan 1992. See also L.A. Tilly, Politics and class in Milan 1881-1901, New York 1992, who considers the colthing industry as not important for the growth of the city. The Author however claims that the clothing industry was the only labor-intensive sector with a predominantly female workforce to show an evolution towards properly capitalistic features. che considera l’industria del vestiario marginale rispetto al processo di crescita industriale della città, sostiene che essa fu l’unica industria labour intensive con prevalenza di manodopera femminile a mostrare segni di trasformazione in senso capitalistico.

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2. The first Italian department store: Grandi Magazzini “Alle Città d’Italia”

The economic transformations described in the previous section provide the main prerequisites for the emergence of the innovative form of retailing first experienced by the textile, clothing and fashion sectors in the central years of the 19th century. The first Italian department store was created in 1865, when two brothers – Ferdinando and Luigi Bocconi – acquired a shop in one of the most central streets of Milan putting an end to their previous activity as more or less itinerant sellers of textile and clothing goods, undertaken together with their father.7 That store marked the beginning of the rise that within a few years allowed the two brothers to occupy the most prominent positions within the city’s business community.8 For sure, their store represented a true novelty for Italian retailing and its growing size explains the move in 1870 in a larger building. Even if the new location was farther from the city center, it was chosen because in it one could exhibit a larger variety of items: not only clothes, but also linens, hats, shoes, drapes and some furniture. Well aware of the fact that a department store must be situated at the heart of the urban space, in 1877 the Bocconi brothers moved back to one of the most central areas of the city opening a grand magasin inspired at the French model. The French echo was clear in the choice of the name – Aux Villes d’Italie – showing how all activities somehow connected to fashion had to claim some kind of relationship with Paris, the undisputed world fashion capital of those days. By the beginning of the 20th century, Alle città d’Italia (the Italian version of the name of the firm, that the Bocconi brothers were soon forced to adopt due to the strong anti-French trend of Italian foreign policy) was undoubtedly the largest department store in the country and had branches centrally located in all major Italian cities (Milan, , , , , Naples, Venice, Florence and Bologna).9 The main store however was the Milanese one, which was established in the heart of the city, occupying a wide area beside the Duomo (cathedral). Even as far as architectural style is concerned, the Bocconi brothers created a store that resembled quite closely the “typical” department store that had become a specific feature

7 Some historians suggest that already in this initial phase of their activity the Bocconi brothers distinguished themselves from other itinerant sellers because they had started to sell some ready-made dresses, that were produced by some seamstresses in their houses. However, there is no particularly convincing evidence of this fact. See C. Poggiali, Ferdinando Bocconi: mercurio in finanziera, Milano, Editoriale Domus, 1945. 8 As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the 20th century Ferdinando Bocconi (Luigi had retired in 1882) was considered one of the richest men in the whole country. See ibid., p. 205 ff. 9 See F. Amatori, Proprietà e direzione, cit., p. 28.

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of the boulevards of the late 19th century ville lumière. As a matter of fact, the building, which was inaugurated in 1889, was the first edifice in Italy to be constructed with the specific purpose of hosting a department store. The Bocconi firm resembled the more advanced European counterparts also in its internal organization. As is well known, the main (and revolutionary) idea behind the development of the department store was basically the concept of a low unitary profit compensated by a very high stock turnover.10 Considering the lower prices that this kind of organization made possible compared to those of traditional shops (in addition to the fact that the free admission system allowed everyone to wander in the departments even if not provided with enough money to purchase anything), historians have talked about department stores as a means of “democratization of fashion”. 11 As we will suggest later, in the case of Alle Città d’Italia available sources do not allow to fully confirm such an hypothesis. The analysis of the variation of prices for clothing items and accessories sold through mail order catalogs suggest instead a more mixed picture, with average prices altogether not affordable, or barely affordable, by the classes with lower incomes. Another characteristic of this modern form of retailing, in this case fully picked up by the Bocconi firm, was the large variety of different products for sale. This was especially striking when compared to traditional shops, that were generally specialized in a limited variety of items. A newspaper article describing Aux Villes d’Italie in 1879 enthusiastically illustrates such an assortment, ranging from perfumes to toys, matches and rugs, from furniture to clothing and fashion accessories.12 Due to the relative backwardness of Italian industry, some of the goods sold at Alle Città d’Italia were imported from Paris. In this case, the already- mentioned importance of the possibility of boasting French origins for goods that were to be sold as fashionable products is stressed by the decision (implemented in the 1870s) to create a buying office in the French capital. The same article also gives some information concerning the productive organization of the Milanese department store at the end of the 1870s, evoking similarities with the more famous

10 The department stores also introduced other innovations in the traditional retail mechanisms. Among these are fixed (labelled) prices, possibility of touching and trying product which were displayed without the obligation of purchasing etc. See Cathedrals of Consumption 11 See debate on this issue in ibid. 12 Quoted by F. Amatori, Proprietà e direzione, cit., p. 29.

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French counterpart.13 As a matter of fact, while in the initial phases of their business the Bocconi brothers had relied on domestic producers for the manufacturing of goods in a way that was quite similar to the pre-industrial putting-out system, by 1879 the firm had created two production workshops (in Turin and Milan) occupying 900 workers for the production of ready-to-wear dresses (both mens’ and womens’). At the same time, each of the branches of Alle Città d’Italia occupied some 150 artisan workers who were employed for the production of custom made garments.14 Getting back more specifically to the subject of our research, the wide assortment of goods was fully mirrored also in the mail order catalogues, which contributed to spreading the merchandise much farther than the walls of Milanese building. Once again, the adoption of this kind of sales technique was by no means specific to the Bocconi firm, as it was typical of all major 19th century department stores. As a matter of fact, mail-order service was already introduced by the forerunner of the Parisian department store in the first half of the 19th century, the magasin de nouveautés.15 The most important among the “true” French department stores of the second half of the century, the Bon Marché, featured a mail-order service in 1871, and by the end of the century “mailings were massive”.16 By then, catalogues were sent not only to customers living in Paris or in other French provinces, but a significant amount was mailed abroad, translated in a variety of different languages.17 The importance of this kind of sales on the overall business of the Bon Marché is remarkable. Already in 1871-72 mail orders accounted for almost 15% of total sales volume, while at the beginning of the 20th century they had increased to more than 17%.18 Organization of such a wide business was clearly a complex matter, involving hundreds of employees and workers, each with specific tasks.

13 On the productive organization of Bon Marché, see M. Miller, The Bon Marché. Burgeois culture and the department store, 1869-1920, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1981, pp. 55 ff. 14 See F. Amatori, Proprietà e direzione, cit., p. 29. 15 Although exact dating of surviving catalogues is still uncertain, it seems that the Parisian Petite Saint-Thomas had organized a mail-order service as early as 1844. See M. Miller, The Bon Marché, cit., p. 26. As far as Italy is concerned, in those same years mail-order catalogs were issued also by other “traditional” shops, especially those active in the textiles and clothing sectors. See ibid., p. 31, n. 54. 16 Miller, Bon Marché, cit., p. 61. The catalog of the 1894 winter season was sent to more than 1,500,00 customers. The Author suggests that the mail-order service might have been started by Bon Marché as early as the 1860s. 17 Data for 1902-1903 show that goods were sent all over the world, see ibid. 18 Ibid.

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Some more specific information on this issue is provided by Emile Zola, who published his famous novel Au Bonheur des Dames (Ladies’ Paradise) in 1883 and collected detailed first- hand material for the book between 1881-1882 (i.e. the period we are considering). His notes on Bon Marché are thus an interesting source to fill in the gap concerning mail-order catalogs of Alle Città d’Italia and to compare the Milanese store with the more famous French counterpart. According to Zola, in 1881-82 the mail order department of the Bon Marché employed 226 persons (while the overall number of employees was 2500 employees).19 The volume of letters received in a year could reach 5,000, i.e. 40 kilos. The department featured a rather striking division of labor: some workers opened the envelopes, others read them, classifying them according to the relevant department. Each letter was assigned a number. The department had many boxes, each with a number corresponding to a received letter, in which the ordered items were put (correspondence based on numbers). Having verified that all the ordered merchandise was present, goods were sent first to the packaging and then to the delivery departments.20 Regrettably, Zola does not provide any information as to the printing of the catalogs (although there was a printing office in the Bon Marché), but he claims that in a single season 340,000 catalogs were distributed in France and 100,000 abroad (printed in different languages). The department store owned elegant horses and carriages for the delivery of items within the city, while the goods ordered in the provinces and abroad were sent by railway. Unfortunately we lack similar data for the Bocconi store. We do know however that in the last decades of the 19th century, the catalog of the Milanese store was published every two months. The 1880 issues were made of 120 pages with more than 300 illustrations and were mailed to some 40,000 customers. The previous year the Bocconi firm had established its own typography, with a printing capacity of some 30,000 catalogs. By the beginning of the following decade, the mail-order department of Alle Città d’Italia received 38,000 letters, and sent some 100,000 parcels.21 The mail order catalogs of Alle Città d’Italia appear very similar to those of their foreign counterparts. In addition to colorful images of a wide variety of garments and accessories, customers were provided with detailed instructions on how to take one’s measurements and information on how eventually to give merchandise back.

19 Emile Zola, Taccuini. Un’etnografia inedita della Francia, Milano, Bollati Boringhieri, 1986, p. 113. 20 Ivi, pp. 117-118. 21 F. Amatori, Proprietà e direzione. La Rinascente, 1917-1969, Milano, Angeli, 1989, p. 31.

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It is important to stress that sales volumes as those suggested by these figures – even if impressive - however do not necessary imply that department stores became a selling point of predominantly ready-to-wear dresses. On the contrary, the detailed analysis of the autumn- winter catalog 1882-1883 shows that the majority of items for sale at Alle Città d’Italia were not standard-made but implied a generally significant intervention of tailors to fit individual measurements and custom specifications and requests (type of material to be used, for example).

3. The mail order catalogue of Alle Città d’Italia

This section analyses the offer proposed by the department stores owned by the Bocconi brothers, examining the style, assortment and prices of the clothes on sale. The instrument we have used for this analysis is the 1882-83 autumn and winter album (l’Album illustrato delle novità Autunno-Inverno 1882-83). This mail order catalogue was distributed early in the autumn season to publicize the entire rage of goods sold in the store and to preset the principle fashion and clothes novelties. At the current stage of our research we have not made any comparisons with catalogues from other years. The origins of mail order catalogues in Italy are connected to radically different factors to those that lead to their birth and development in the USA. In the USA companies were created directly specialised in mail order sales - the general mail order houses (e.g. SEARS) -, and subsequently they diversified their activity to include the concept of popular stores. In Italy mail order sales developed in a different manner, which reflected the socio-demographic, urban and commercial characteristics of the country. The density of population in the rural areas, the fragmented commercial structure and the existence of travelling street merchants obstructed for a long time the birth of companies specialised in sales by correspondence. The first attempts were made by manufacturers and retailers, such as the above mentioned Bocconi department stores, who invested in marketing and distribution using catalogues and setting up their own internal shipping departments. The stores owned by the Bocconi brothers started to send out illustrated sales catalogues on a bi-monthly basis starting in 1878. The more important issues were those in April, which published the fashion novelties for the spring and summer, and October for autumn and

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winter. The other issues focussed on specific lines, the sales season or special events: March was dedicated to underwear, the December issue to Christmas decorations and toys. The remaining issues were for the “end of season special offers”. The illustrations in the catalogues were generally preceded by a section explaining the shipping, packing and payment procedures, and eventual system for returning goods. To promote the long-range purchase of clothes made to measure, the catalogue contained the instructions necessary for passing on to the department store the measurements to be used when producing the article of clothing. The parts of the body to be measured, in all about ten, were indicated on a drawing of a figure. Each measurement was marked with a letter, which corresponded to a table in which the client had to indicate his measurements. In the case of clothing for children, both male and female, there was a higher level of standardisation: in fact it was sufficient to indicate the age, the sleeve length, shoulder width and height of the child. The order in which the goods were presented in the catalogue reflected the order in which they were physically displayed in the store. Various types of cloth occupied the first pages: silks, satins, velvets, cottons and wool. There followed the section dedicated to clothing, which included the entire range and all the accessories – woollens, male and female underwear, wedding dresses, suits for men and women, hats, gloves, ties – and the one dedicated to household linen. Then there were the sewing articles, travel goods, umbrellas and parasols, perfumes, sewing machines, household objects, concluding with decorative articles and artistic bronzes. The catalogue was thus a sort of virtual shop, which traced the layout of the goods sold in the building in Piazza Duomo in Milano. It reproduced the elegant atmosphere with a coloured front cover bearing the new trends in fashion and sober internal pages containing illustrations framed in decorative motifs.

3.1. Corporate image: the stylistic characteristics of the clothes offered by the Magazzini Bocconi The analysis of the stylistic characteristics of the clothes sold by the Magazzini Bocconi shows that they wanted to appear as a store which was up to date with the latest fashion novelties. The language used in the captions beneath the figures in the catalogue was full of jargon taken form the fashion glossaries of Paris and London. This clearly revealed the intention of stating a strong link with the two European capitals, which dictated the trends in

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male and female fashion. The models reproduced in the catalogue where in many ways similar to those published in the most elegant fashion magazines – the leaders among these were Margherita and the Corriere delle Dame - which in those years circulate in Milan among the ladies belonging to the higher social classes. The cut of the models confirmed the contemporary style in which the tournure (or pouff) had definitively affirmed itself. They relegated drapes and padding to the back of the dress, leaving the front flat. The princesse was a loose fitting dress, not split at the waist, contrary to the usual female dresses of the time that had a separate skirt and corset. The frequent special offers – which made it possible to accelerate the rotation of goods, reduce stocking costs and to increase the volume of sales, maintaining unit profit margins – transmitted to the client the unequivocal message that the range was constantly updated to keep up with the fickle fashion world. At the same time they allowed the department store to attract the attention of those numerous women who were more parsimonious, less demanding, but not less sensitive to the fashions of Paris.

3.2. Corporate strategy: assortment and prices The assortment of the goods on sale included everything necessary for creating a complete outfit. As far as clothes for women were concerned, the assortment ranged from underwear to sets of blouses and skirts, from dresses to coats, from cloaks to the accessories ever present in a female outfit – gloves, hats, umbrellas, handbags, handkerchiefs – finishing with decorative elements such as ribbons, lace, bows and decorations. The clothes were not connected to any specific occasion or use. On the contrary, the captions often outlined the adaptability and versatility of the articles offered, in open contrast with the indications given by the label. Each article of clothing was presented on average in six different versions. They were different in terms of cloth type and design, trimmings and the various combinations that could be put together. Each article was presented in a base version, which could be personalised on request. The personalisation could be the use of a different cloth – normally more expensive – from the one presented in the catalogue, the addition of decorations and precious accessories, or the extra care taken in finishing the article. The catalogue offered standard clothes that could be personalised at a supplementary cost, depending on the type of personalisation requested.

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The cost of the personalisation varied considerably depending on the type of clothing – male or female – and the type of variation. Personalising an article of female clothing could imply an additional cost of 33% to 25% more than the middle range model – the equivalent of 28 lire for a coat and 59 lire for a complete dress. This depended on whether the personalisation involved the use of a cloth of higher quality or more refined trimmings.22 Starting form an average price base model, personalising the article one could therefore obtain an article that was more expensive than the most expensive base model, which could in turn be enriched. In other words, the prices at which the base models were presented in the catalogue underestimates the buying power of the potential clients of the stores run by the Bocconi brothers. Secondly, the incidence on the overall price of an article of female clothing of the surcharge due to the use of a different cloth form the one proposed in the catalogue, was greater than the incidence of the surcharge due to applications and trimmings. The differential – which can be estimated in a few decimal points – probably reflected the price gap existing between every day cloths and high quality cloths. But, it can also be interpreted as an indicator of the level of standardisation of the production process. Finally, the analysis of the prices at which the basic models of the various products were put on sale reveals a marked uniformity of distribution between two extremes, represented by the minimum prices, which were the special offers, and the top prices of the luxury products. The analysis carried out so far highlights contrasting aspects of the commercial strategy employed by the Bocconi brothers’ department stores. On the one hand, some quality indicators – in particular sales and the adaptability of the clothing to the different moments of daily life – could lead one to believe that the clients, motivated by price and life style, preferred ready made clothes. On the other hand, the fact that the clothes could be personalized and the cost of the personalisation, lead one to imagine clients with greater economic possibilities. These people could find not only the latest fashions, but also the latest production techniques in the department store. In those same years, in Paris, Charles Frédéric Worth (1825-1895)23, dressmaker for the leading European aristocratic courts, produced hand

22 Personalising an article of male clothing could imply an extra cost of between 50% and l’80% more than the price of an average model. The greater cost of the personalisation of clothing for men is explained, apart from its inferior unit cost compared to women’s clothing, by the type of cloth used, usually special woollen cloths that were available in a limited range, and by the type of additions which were usually made of fur.

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made dresses which he transformed into unique items adding superimposed cloth panels, creating rich drapes, and the applying precious decorations. So who could afford to shop in the Bocconi brothers’ department stores? The analysis of family wealth in different professional categories gives us some useful information for answering this question.

Table 1 Accounts of the average four people Milanese Family.

Professional category Year Total annual expenses Expenses for clothes %

Workman in the clothes industry 188 748,25 182,50 24.4 0 Workwoman in the clothes industry 188 638,75 146 22,9 0 Workman* 187 1613,30 255,50 15,8 8 Employee 189 1649,57 244 14,8 3

* A typical family with two parents and four children. Source: S.Zaninelli, I consumi a Milano nell’Ottocento, Roma: Edindustria, 1973, 108-117.

The figures illustrated in the table describe the economic situation of the families of workers and artisans, which at the end of the 19th Century represented the majority of the population of Milan.24 For the family of the average employee we have figures for the split of overall

23 Born in Bourne, in Lincolnshire, he started work at the age of 12 as a shop assistant in London, first with Swan & Edgar and then with Lewis & Allemby, large emporiums specialized in cloths, tapestry, shawls and silks. In 1845 he decided to move to Paris to become a salesman in the famous magasin de nouveautès Gagelin in rue Richelieu. After only five years, he opened an internal dressmaking department, which he was in charge of. In 1857-58 he left Gagelin to set up on his own. The start was difficult, with about twenty employees and the collaboration of his wife, Marie Vernet, a model he had met while working for Gagelin. They were soon rewarded with success after making a dress for the princess Pauline de Metternich, wife of the Prussian ambassador to the French Court. She introduced them to the Empress Eugenia, and in 1859 he became the official court dressmaker. Suppliers to the courts of France, Austria, Sweden, Italy, Spain and Russia, after the advent of democracy Worth turned his attention to the industrial bourgeois, towards the world of politics and show business, entering the atmosphere of the worldly Belle Époque. The undisputed master of taste and elegance in the second half of the 19th Century, Worth was the first person to introduce commercial and tailoring innovations: he introduced the idea of dividing fashion into seasons and the diffusion of paper models of his creations in the international market.

24 In the absence of data for the entire population and above all for the middle classes and city bourgeois, one can only attribute to them the levels of expenditure indicated by the “theoretical principles of domestic economy” according to which the family accounts were split 50% for food, 20% for lodgings and 30% other expenditure

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clothing expenditure: 116 Lire for clothes, 80 Lire for shoes, 48 Lire for laundry. An employee who had bought a complete dress or suit from the Bocconi department stores – both in the basic version costing respectively 59 and 51 Lire, without any personalisation – would have used up almost his entire clothing budget for the year. He would have had enough left to buy a shirt (6,75 Lire) - but putting off the purchase of spare cuffs and collars – a hat (the average price of a female hat was 28 lire and that of a male hat was 10 lire), and any other underwear or clothing for his children. Buying the same goods in the base version would without doubt have helped a more balanced management of the family accounts.

Conclusions

This paper presents the first provisional results of a research we have started quite recently on the catalogs of the Milanese department store in the period between the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th. Our analysis seems to shed some doubts on the levels of standardization and “democratization” of fashion which have long been connected to the appearance of department stores. Even if in many ways catalogs can be seen as a means of diffusion of fashion items to a wide audience of potential customers, our research suggests that standardization was not so strong as one could suppose (for example, by considering that prices of all goods are clearly indicated). On the contrary, a careful exam of the catalogs shows that most clothes and accessories had to be accurately personalized and costs were generally quite high. This means that in this phase, Alle Città d’Italia for sure did not aim at selling to the lowest social classes (i.e. the widest market segment), even if one of the main principles on which the department store was based was high volume of sales and low unitary profits. In other words, it seems that even if the doors of the department store were surely open to all, most items were not affordable by all (except for specific events, such as the famous “white sales”, where personalization of items was probably very limited and standardization reached its highest levels). Moving from these results, in the future we plan to continue the exploration of the possibility of using mail order catalogues as a historical and savings. [Zaninelli, p. 115] This is again a very generic indication, from which we can at best deduce that the expenditure for clothing of a middle class family was not very different, in percentage terms, to that of the family of an artisan working in clothes production. While we know nothing in absolute terms.

14 EBHA Conference DRAFT VERSION Frankfurt, 1-3 September 2005 PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE

source, with the aim of understanding the main characteristics of fashion consumption and its evolution, of analyzing the typology of goods for sale and the diversification of supply, and, finally, of describing the channels through which fashion companies diffused the innovations in fashion styles, accurately described by costume historians, fuelling their spread in one of the most dynamic urban contest of Europe.

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