La Vie en “Robe”: A Spotlight on Turn-of-the-Century Paris Fashion
Caroline Giddis walks us through French fashion at the height of “La Parisienne.”
By Caroline Giddis, Curatorial Research Associate, High Museum of Art
Paris, the City of Light, was one of the first cities in Europe to install gas streetlamps to illuminate the ever-expanding streets and sidewalks. This new urban development initiative, which began in the 1860s, shed light on new city blocks of ornate Haussmann architecture and allowed city-goers to remain in the streets longer after sunset. What these gas lamps also achieved was extending the lifespan and visibility of a nineteenth-century Parisian woman’s outfit.
While Paris is the pinnacle of luxury fashion and accessories today, this tradition of exceptional craftmanship dates to the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (1638–1715), and his finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683), who set a precedent for manufacturing and style that would continue through the centuries. Nineteenth-century Parisian fashion was no exception. In the exhibition In the City of Light: Paris, 1850–1920, several works depict women and their attire, whether they are strolling the streets, attending a performance, or serving as the model for a portrait. Using a selection of these works from the exhibition, which range from 1860 to 1913, we can explore the world of nineteenth-century fashion to expand upon the evolutions of the stereotype of La Parisienne, clothing manufacturing and shopping habits, and the center of fashion influence: the stage.
La Parisienne — A Cultural Icon
In the popular early twentieth-century magazine of fashion plates, Le Journal des Dames et des Modes (1911–1914), French poet and playwright Pierre Veber (1869–1942) contributed the guidelines for achieving elegance, writing, “Elegance resides in the perfect harmony of thoughts, words, acts, gestures, attitudes, and costume. It is through costume that elegance expresses itself most quickly.” [1] In Veber’s opinion, the fastest and surest way to project oneself as an elegant person was by dressing the part. The literary figure and “type” that embodied these pillars of elegance in French society was La Parisienne, in which Jean-Désiré Ringel d’Illzach found inspiration enough to create his Petite Parisienne sculpture in 1883.
This figure is dressed in quintessential early 1880s style: a slender silhouetted skirt; a jacket with a form-fitting bodice over a cuirasse corset and high collar, slim, three-quarter-length sleeves; and ruffles, lace, and frills from head to toe. [2] From the side, her large ruffled bustle and train, which she holds in her left hand, are noticeable. No costume was complete without a headpiece, and here La Parisienne is shown with a bonnet trimmed with ribbon and flowers and tied neatly under her chin.
This ideal woman embodied the highest tiers of elegance, wealth, and personal accomplishment of the age. Dressed in haute couture from Parisian couturiers such as Charles Frederick Worth and Paul Poiret, La Parisienne was a walking advertisement for the consumer economy of fashion and accessories. Her fellow Parisians could alternatively visually consume her impeccable fashion at the theater, opera, soiree, or on the newly paved boulevards. La Parisienne was a symbol of both national superiority and ideal femininity. [3] d’Illzach’s Petite Parisienne is composed and elegant — the sculptural rendition of a fashion plate.
Paul César Helleu’s Young Woman Looking in a Mirror (ca. 1895) is another example of the impeccable style of La Parisienne and her careful attention to her appearance. Styling a mid-1890s costume, she wears a high-necked dress or shirtwaist under a layered cape. Capes were highly fashionable during this period because they sat nicely over the ever-growing puff or gigot sleeve. She wears a straw hat trimmed with ribbons and flowers, and her hair is only half-pinned up, leaving a long braid trailing down her back, which was uncommon at this time but emerged as a stronger trend toward the 1900s. [4] Because Helleu’s sketch captures this woman’s private toilette, she may be intending to pin the braid up, but it’s unlikely as she already has on her hat and cape. Helleu depicts her right before the most important moment in fashion, when La Parisienne steps out into the streets of the city.
Street Style at the Turn of the Century
Nothing projects the sophistication, superiority, and luxury of a Parisienne quite like the subject of Jacques-Henri Lartigue’s photograph taken on the affluent Avenue du Bois de Boulogne in 1911. Donned in a wide-brimmed hat, fur coat and stole, ornately trimmed dress, and boots, accompanied by her two pure-bred dogs, she emanates elegance. The streets of Paris, then as today, serve as their runway.
Achieving this look did not come quickly, easily, or cheaply. Couture, and later haute couture, was the ultimate status symbol [5]. Wearing a custom-made garment by Worth, Poiret, or Jacques Doucet demonstrated the unique taste of the woman wearing it and the craftsmanship of the maker, but it also often flaunted the wealth of her husband or lover who could afford to dress her in such a manner. Explaining the power of couture, Valerie Steele writes in Paris Fashion: A Cultural History (2017), “Fashion served both to maintain hierarchy and to weaken it — as anonymous individuals were increasingly judged on the basis of their appearance.” [6]
As the Third Empire emerged in the 1870s, so did confection, or ready-made fashion, which first arrived in small luxury shops and later became the cornerstone of department stores. [7] By manufacturing clothing at affordable prices, fashion found democratization. Dressing in the latest modes no longer belonged solely to the wealthy. The woman featured on Lefèvre’s poster advertisement (1897) sports a common tailor-made ensemble of the late 1890s with a skirt, a blouse over a straight-front corset, and a gigot-sleeved jacket. [8]
The production of fashion affected the consumption of it. Browsing multiple options of ready-made items made shopping a more popular leisure activity, a scene that appealed to artists who captured modern life. In an illustration for the magazine Gil Blas Illustré (1900), Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen shows a Parisienne deciding between two feather-plumed hats at the milliner’s shop while a display of various trimmed caps sits in the background. This scene could also be taking place at a millinery stall in a department store.
Department stores such as Le Bon Marché and La Belle Jardinière revolutionized shopping by introducing a one-stop shop the size of a city block for clothing and accessories. Providing a visual feast of window displays, department stores appealed to passersby and reduced the number of visits a woman had to make while running errands. [9] While window displays, accessibility to fashion, and haute couture strutted through the streets created a web of influence on trends in Paris, one figure held more influence than all others — the actress.
Early Fashion Influencers
Nineteenth-century writer Octave Uzanne (1851–1931) reflected, “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.” [10] No fashionable Parisian woman wanted to be caught in a slightly out-of-date outfit, but the hunger for the latest looks reached a fever pitch during the reign of stage actresses such as Madame Réjane (Gabrielle Charlotte Réju, 1856–1920) and Sarah Bernhardt (Henriette-Rosine Bernard, 1844–1923). [11] Because actresses purchased their costumes for certain roles, they wanted the very best to wear both on and off stage, visiting only the most excellent couturiers for their dresses and suits. Madame Réjane, sketched by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec around 1899, favored the couturier Doucet, while Sarah Bernhardt often preferred Worth but refused him exclusivity. Once one of these iconic women wore a Doucet or Worth design during a performance, department stores began copying and producing ready-to-wear versions within days. [12]
This celebrity-imitation method of fashion trendsetting is no different from modern day. When popular stars like Hailey Bieber or Taylor Swift wear a couture designer dress that garners attention, fast-fashion stores manufacture an affordable copy available by the next week, if not sooner. The desire to look just like the most beautiful, talented, and admired figures remains the same.
The Fashion Capital Reigns
For many women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the figure to emulate remained La Parisienne. The classic, sophisticated, never-over-done vision of elegance, the Parisian woman remains a mythologized icon to aspire to. With 1.3 billion views on TikTok videos tagged with #parisianstyle and #parisianaesthetic, fashionistas achieve the look of a composed, sophisticated urbanite of the French capital. The seventeenth-century origins of French style continue to peek through, however, especially during Paris Fashion Week as fashion houses and designers — the modern couturiers — debut their latest collections in the city’s most historically decadent sites. Many of those same locations served as the first runways for Les Parisiennes promenading in the nineteenth century, underscoring that fashion itself may evolve, while the flow of inspiration between the city and its clothiers remains as powerful as ever.
Absorb the full scope of Parisian fashion and influence in the High’s exhibition In the City of Light: Paris, 1850–1920, on view until December 31, 2023. And if you’d like to learn more about how this exhibition came to be, join our four-week class, Behind the Curtain: In the City of Light, that starts October 26.
[1] Pierre Veber, Le Journal des Dames et des Modes 9 (August 20, 1912): 67.
[2] Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 3rd ed. (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), 93.
[3] Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 93.
[4] “1890–1899,” Time Period, Fashion History Timeline, Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, last modified August 18, 2020, https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1890-1899/.
[5] Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 7.
[6] Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 9.
[7] Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 7.
[8] Fashion History Timeline, “1890–1899.”
[9] Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 133.
[10] Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 115.
[11] Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 140.
[12] Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 142.
