EX LIBRIS Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration GIVEN BY The Hospital Book and News Socle IN 1900 FASHION IN PARIS THE VARIOUS PHASES OF FEMININE TASTE AND ESTHETICS FROM 1797 TO 1897=^ By OCTAVE UZANNE ^ from the French by LADY MARY LOYD ^ WITH ONE HUNDRED HAND- COLOURED PLATES fc? TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANCOIS COURBOIN LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS MDCCCXCVIII (pr V All rights reserved CHAP. PAGE I. The Close of the Eighteenth Century ... i Licentiousness of Dress and Habits under the Directory of the Nineteenth II. The Dawn Century . 23 The Fair Sex in the Tear VIII First Empire III. Under the ...... +5 Feminine Splendour in Court and City IV. Dress, Drawing - rooms, and Society under the Restoration ....... 65 1815-1825 V. The Fair Parisian in 1830 ..... 85 Manners, Customs, and Refme?nent of the Belles of the Romantic Period VI. Fashion and Fashion's Votaries, from 1840 to 1850 103 VII. Fashion's Panorama in 1850 . 115 The Tapageuses and the Myst'erieuses in under VIII. Life Paris the Second Empire . .127 Leaders of the Gay World, and Cocodettes IX. The Fair Sex and Fashions in General from 1870 till 1880 ....... 147 X. The Parisian, as She is . .165 Her Psychology, Her Tastes, Her Dress MM. kmmi X<3 INTRODUCTION he compilation of a complete bibliography, even the most concise, of the works devoted to the subject of Costume, T and to the incessant changes of Fashion at every period, and in every country, in the world, would be a considerable undertaking—a work worthy of such learning as dwelt in the monasteries of the sixteenth century. Such a book would, in an abbreviated form, be a sort of " Dictionary of Origins," useful for the "General History of Mankind." Its readers would perceive, not without surprise, that the gravest minds, the noblest and least frivolous intellects— often, indeed, the most austere of Churchmen—have found delight in this species of butterfly hunt across time and earthly space, after the vagaries of Fashion. Nothing, in fact, so conjures up a people or a special period, nothing so closely tallies with their character, and mental and moral state, as the dominant note of their costume, and the vari-coloured splendour of their adornments. The art of dress is governed by certain general laws, which affect the lives, the colour, the harmonious expres- sion of a given whole, increasing or modifying its beauty, to the occasional perversion of our taste, and misguiding of our aesthetic instincts. Its influence is felt everywhere—in the nation's literature, painting, and statuary, in its ideas, its language, and even its political economy. Science, medical and other, cannot treat questions of dress with indiffer- ence, and, as Charles Blanc has remarked, dress and adornment, far from being subjects unworthy of observation, furnish the philosopher with important moral data, and are a very evident clue to the ruling ideas of any special period. fl0|Ol ' vi INTRODUCTION Further, the incessant mutability of Fashion is a necessity, for this, according to Chamfort, is the most natural toll that can be levied by the industry of the poor man on the vanity of the rich. The whims of Fashion, far from protecting us from her attacks, or weaning us from our devotion, end by haunting us beyond all escape. Her caprices resemble those of the fair sex—the failings which should drive us away are the very charm which draws us back. Men adore Fashion in their youth ; peoples, in their old age, give themselves utterly up to her. Civilised nations are like sensitive women, or, again, like those cour- tesans whose coquetry increases and becomes more exquisite, as age advances. " As the intellect broadens, taste grows more perfect," said a certain moralist. Acuteness of perception engenders mutability of feeling, and the excessive delicacy of the aesthetic sense inevitably brings forth a diseased condition of inconstancy, which leads up to the inevitable yoke of Fashion—that Fashion which has never, according to Balzac, been anything more than the general opinion on the subject of dress. Books on Fashion, then, will be sought and welcomed, to all time and in every sphere, with special favour, because they are both recre- ative and instructive, and because everybody believes him or herself capable of enjoying, of understanding, and of interpreting them. They rouse general curiosity. To women they supply the history of their banner, of their guild, of their own versatility. Men, gazing on their pages, seek to call up the memory of dead charms, and their sad thoughts stray to those far distant joys which have faded out for ever. The children open their great wondering eyes on the gay shadows still touched with life's own colours ; and the old return to youth, and feel their dead passions stir again, as they gaze on the sunny mirage of the past, which starts into light under the magic-lantern of these coloured plates. If we consider France alone— the country which, for so many years, created fashion, and imposed the eternal laws of costume on neighbouring nations—we may fairly say that the art of dress has never been more interesting than since it became democratised, and thus grew general. The Revolution, which overthrew, with no useful result, so many traditions, and set up humanitarian theories far exceeding in number the really beneficent reforms it conferred on the people—that Revo- lution which dug so mighty an abyss between two societies, and from which the history of our uncouth modern civilisation takes its INTRODUCTION vii date— the Revolution, when it severed the links of all French tradition, gave birth to a new conception of the aesthetics of dress, of which the fashions of the present century—so extraordinary in their number, so near and yet so far away already—are the logical outcome. In the beginning, these garments of a newly liberated people left the body free, followed its outlines, and were well-nigh transparent in texture. Their inventors drew their inspiration from nature and the pagan mythology ; they aimed at concealing nothing, and followed the harmonious lines of Grecian beauty ; then, under the Empire, we see them, less frivolous already, growing more Roman, and leaning towards the cramped lines of military uniform. Under the Restoration, the fashions, like the neo-mediasval literature of the time, grew formal, affecting the stiff lines and starched manners of a sham Troubadourism. The year 1830 brought more of the Renaissance, dress was more lissome, more voluptuous ; never were fashions more feminine, more subtle, more original, more exquisitely artistic. Later, exaggeration began, increased, and grew worse and worse, till it reached the monstrous caricature of the crinoline, and the monkey-like trappings of the Second Empire. Later than 1870, we can come to no clear judgment concerning our taste in dress, because a space of more than fifteen years must elapse before any definite opinion can be formed of shapes and colours as a whole. An ancient fashion is always a curiosity. A fashion slightly out of date is an absurdity ; the reigning fashion alone, in which life stirs, commands us by its grace and charm, and stands beyond discussion. These successive fashions, so strange, so curious from many points of view, we have endeavoured to determine in the course of this work, as we marshal them before our readers' gaze, amidst those various surroundings of our beloved Paris, amongst which, in the course of these last hundred years, they have moved and had their being. To save the illustrations from the stamp of common- placeness, peculiar to the " Fashion Plate," we have desired to make the background of each appropriate, showing forth the architecture against which fashion stood outlined, whether in haunts of elegance, or of mere pleasure. Mons. Francois Courboin has faithfully carried out this desire, and has reproduced the gallery of retrospective engravings, for which we have appealed to his talent and special knowledge, to our complete satisfaction. Each of the one hundred coloured illustrations is a faithful witness, a complete representation, of some corner in Paris, vanished now, or utterly changed. Fashion only figures therein as a logical and indis- Vlll INTRODUCTION pensable accessory, and all the interest is centred in the background of the picture, which reveals one of the most fashionable aspects of our ancient city. The drawings dispersed throughout the text possess all the charm, the spirit, and the delicacy of the old vignettes of the 1840 school, and will certainly delight every amateur, both he whose curiosity is of modern growth, and he whose passion for illustrated books is mingled with certain tender memories of past days. As regards the substance of the book itself—the ten successive chapters on Parisian Fashions—they are, as it were, the artistic expression and synthesis of everything written, in the course of the nineteenth century, on our national salons, dress and ideas. OCTAVE UZANNE. Paris: October 18, 1897. FASHION IN PARIS 1797-189 —— " One fashion has hardly extinguished another, before it is wiped out by one newer still, which itself gives place to a successor, and that not destined to be the last; so fickle are we !" LabruySre. *' Fashion is the Goddess of Appearances." Colton. "An ancient fashion remains a curiosity ; a fashion but lately gone by becomes an absurdity ; a reigning mode, in which life stirs, strikes us as the very personification of grace." —O. U. The Qoloured T'lates Vigier's Baths. Year V (1797) Frontispiece A Drive in a Whiskey, Longchamps. Year V {1797) 'To face page viii )n the Terrace of the Tuileries.