The Little Seamstress, John Faed, (c) Dumfries and Galloway Council (Kirkcudbright); Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
This is certainly the day of utilizing one’s talent, whatever it may be. A woman who lives in another city found herself, after 20 years of happy sheltered married life, a widow with two daughters, 16 and 18, to make a home for, and an income so small as to be scarcely worth mentioning. The elder daughter was delicate, and the younger had two years of her college course to complete. To meet the crisis and tide over an interval which would give one child health and the other education confronted the mother. For a time she saw no way to pursue. Then a clear-headed friend came to her one day for a talk over affairs.
“No, Isabel,” she began, “I know your liabilities, what are your assets? I mean beside your little income. What can you do absolutely well?”
“I’ve a general knowledge of many things,” was Isabel’s discouraged reply, “but the only thing I can do absolutely well,” and her laugh was mirthless, “is to make over old clothes. You know I’ve always had a great aptitude at that for the girls and myself.”
“To be sure you have, and I believe you can do that now,” came the prompt answer to astonish Isabel.
Further talks followed, and in the end the friend persuaded her companion that something could be done with this talent. The beginning that spring was small and merely among her circle of wealthy friends. She did not actually make over the old clothes, but spent a morning or a day with the family seamstress, carefully inspecting accumulated materials and suggesting designs and combinations which permitted the continued use of dresses and fabrics. She charged by the day, and her rate was not low, but she saved it often a dozen times over to her patrons. The autumn saw her clientele increased, and now, after three years, she is busy nine months of the year at good prices.
Before other women embark in the same occupation it must be understood that this woman has little short of genius for her unique calling. It is positive pleasure to see her at her practice, for she jocosely styles herself doctor of robes, and certainly her skill and deftness are closely allied to the surgeon who fits and restores humanity’s broken bones and misplaced anatomy.
She is shown a fine Paris dress bodice of black satin, whose sleeves have vanished, and of whose skirt is left a single straight breadth. She looks them over critically.
“Have you any velvet or figured heavy silk or silk and wool cloth or any handsome black novelty material?” she asked.
A piece of frise velvet is found which will do for full sleeve tops with some other cuffs and leave two or three straight pieces. Then the odds and ends trimming box is looked over, and a few detached ornaments and some black lace are found. The waist is fitted, the long postilion back carefully opened and pressed and left to hang. The pieces of the frise velvet are set on for skirt fronts and hip pieces joined by jars of the black satin skirt breadth. The jet ornaments are put on the waist and at critical points on the hip skirts. Puffs of lace laid over white silk and a collar to match are made and the end is a costume jacket of imported elegance that looks as if it might have cost $150 and did cost not a penny beyond the seamstress’ time and the designer’s suggestion, as the black silk lining in this case was produced from a discarded coat.
If something extra is needed, she can tell to the shade, quality and fraction of measurement what it must be. And her customers are no longer confined to the wealthy. Persons in moderate circumstances realize that their need of her is quite as great. Did space permit, the recital of her many triumphs in evolving a Worth gown from the family ragbag would be most interesting. Her work is carried on quietly, her patrons advertising her, from one to another and her excellent social position, which has undoubtedly much aided her, has never been in the least impaired. New York Times.
Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot 21 August 1894: p. 5
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil can only applaud the lady’s ingenuity in dress-doctoring and her willingness to accept the advice of her sensible friend. But we really are intensely interested to hear the details of that “Worth gown from the ragbag…”
Remodeling gowns was done by all classes of society.
“Those who are still deep in the fascinating whirl of society engagements do not need to trouble themselves much on this subject [the remodeling of one’s wardrobe.] They usually employ a dressmaker, as they do their household help, by the year, and she assumes the duty of remodeling and making over what she deems worth the labor; but there are many who at best can but afford to employ a clever seamstress to do this kind of work. There are others, again, who must do the greater part of it themselves, or see many dresses laid aside before they have done full service. There is hardly a gown, whether designed for parlor, bedroom, or ball room, but will bear making over once. The clever dressmaker can take out a breadth here, put a panel there, place a Spanish flounce where skirt front has been soiled, or set in a pleating somewhere else. Slashings can be cut, or covered, vests inserted or removed, etc. etc., till any half worn or half soiled gown may be restored to almost its pristine freshness. Even ball costumes can, by skilled hands, be so reconstructed and remodeled as to last and look well after three alterations, and prove satisfactory to any ordinary society goer, unless she be one of those who consider a wholly new costume sent over by Mons. Worth indispensable to her comfort at every evening out.”
Cleveland [OH] Leader 27 January 1889: p. 10
One reason that remodeling was so popular was that ready-made clothing was not always of good quality or plentiful, while there was a surplus of seamstresses and dressmakers. In 1892, these were just a few of the many ladies advertising their talents as dressmakers in The New York Herald. Note the range of fees:
*A dressmaker and ladies’ tailor, “an artist in cutting, fitting, designing; just returned from Paris; late with Worth, Rhodnot, Mrs. Connolly; carriage and tea gown creations; garments made from $12 up…$3.50 per day or at home.”
*Experienced dressmaker in wealthy society family to remodel evening street dresses; superior judgment, good style $2.50 per day.
*Seamstress, First Class, Hand or Machine…will furnish W.W. sewing machine free of charge $1 day.
*Seamstress, Understanding Dressmaking, to go out by the day $1.25 $6 per week.
See the “dressmaking” and “domestic arrangements” tabs for further adventures in make-do and mend, albeit not always of couture quality.
[This post was originally published in 2014.]
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
1909 House of Paquin evening frock. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Ask any American woman you meet if she has been in Paris, and if she cannot answer yes, she will say, with brightening eyes, “No, not yet, but I expect to go,” or, if the trip across looks doubtful, “No; but I do hope to go some time!”
I have never met an American woman who had not either been to Paris was expecting to go, or “hoping” to go. And one of the principal reasons why she expects to go or hopes to go is to shop. She has this ambition to shop in Paris, whether she lives away out on a Western farm on the outskirts of nowhere, in the town of Kalamazoo, the village of Some-thingsburg, or the city of New York. I suppose this is the foundation for the orthodox belief that all good Americans go to Paris when they die.
I am not particularly surprised that American women who have not shopped in Paris have the keenest desire to do so, since the majority of American women who have shopped in Paris are so continually writing or talking about it. “O, the Paris shops!” they say, adding nothing more, as though the delights of a shopping tour in the gay city were too wonderful to be described in English.
**
La Samaritaine, vintage silver print, eBay listing by photovintagefrance
I have yet to meet an American woman who seemed willing to tell what I believe she knows in her heart of hearts is the truth about the Paris shops, and therefore I will here essay to tell the truth for her–that there is not in all Paris one solitary large shop worthy of comparison with the great department stores of New York, and not being myself a New Yorker, I do not think I can be accused of undue prejudice in favor of a native city.
When I say the Paris shops do not bear comparison with the New York stores, I speak after having just spent the autumn months in Paris, where I saw whatever was latest in the way of prices and fittings and goods. Take, for example, the matter of window dressing. In the large “magasins” the Parisians do not display the slightest taste when it comes to making their windows attractive. Only in the smaller shop windows does one find an arrangement of goods and colors that does not offend the eye. Along the Avenue de l’Opera there are a few jewelers who make an attractive display in their small windows, and over in the little streets of the “Quarter” one occasionally comes upon a dealer in antiques, who shows taste in displaying his wares behind glass.
But I speak now of the large establishments which are to Paris what the department stores of Broadway, Sixth avenue, Twenty-third and Fourteenth streets and Fifth avenue are to New York. Take the “Louvre,” the “Galerie Lafayette,” “Princeton,” “Samaritaine” and “Bon Marche,” for example. At first approaching them it seems to me any New Yorker must at once be reminded of Baxter street and other such parts of New York, for all the pavement surrounding these large “magasins” is lined with little booths where sundry garments of the most horrifying aspect are displayed for sale, and the clerks in attendance are calling your attention to their wares. These booths, let it be remembered, are a part of the great magasin. Back of the booths are the windows of the store, and how any New Yorker can find them attractive is beyond my comprehension. Paris knows nothing of the art of large window dressing. Indeed, if one were to judge of the contents of the store by those of the windows, one would certainly pass it by. However, it is a tradition in Paris that you must not judge of a shop by its outside appearance, so let us enter and examine the bargain tables and the regular counters. Here are coarse handkerchiefs, 75 centimes, or 15 cents. Handkerchiefs 10 times more beautiful and much finer may be bought in any of the Sixth avenue department stores for 12 cents. Here are gloves–yes, let me admit, they are very much cheaper than one can find them in New York, and, therefore, if one is over in Paris, one should lay in a good stock of gloves if she can evade the customs inspectors.
Here are ready-made collar supports, with whalebone and ruchings, all prepared to sew in the neck of a bodice and reach quite to the ears. These also are 75 centimes each, 15 cents, while they may be bought two for a quarter in Twenty-third street, or Broadway. Last September I bought a set of combs for the coiffure. I had mislaid my good London set and wanted something cheap on the spur of the moment, I paid 4f. for them, or 80 cents. I find prettier and stronger ones for 69 cents.
**
French trousseau petticoat, c. 1900. Metropolitan Museum of Art
Of course, everybody looks at handmade underwear when in Paris–it is the only kind worth looking at. No body would ever dream of buying machine-made lingerie or blouses in Paris. They are simply impossible. The handmade garments are dainty and attractive and comparatively cheap. That is to say, if a woman is able to pay $15 for a lingerie blouse, or $5 for a chemise or nightgown, she can do very much better in Paris than in New York. The $15 blouse will be $10 in Paris, and the $10 nightgown will be $5 or $6. But the woman who is accustomed to paying $1.50 each for her dainty surplice-shaped nightgowns and $2 for her smart machine-made summer blouse should not dream of buying these garments in Paris. For those prices, she cannot find anything she will be willing to wear. The fact is that there is no city in the world where such dainty machine-made garments of all sorts can be found at such low prices as in New York.
Do you want a pair of pretty little slippers for the opera or a party? If you have only $2 to pay for them, buy them in New York. If you can afford more than that, try Paris. Do you always wear silk stockings? Then by all means get them in Paris when you are over there–unless you will listen to my advice and get them in Regent street, London. If you are accustomed to wearing cotton hose always, and want to get the finest and daintiest possible stockings for your quarter of a dollar, buy them in New York.
Do you want dress goods by the yard? If you wish cotton goods, don’t fail to get it in New York. It is daintier and cheaper here. If you are going across and must have yards and yards of cloth or silk–still I say don’t get them in Paris. London is the place for your purchases. Do you anticipate going over in the summer and remaining till the chilly October weather will necessitate a good heavy steamer coat which you can wear in New York when you return here? Of all things, don’t waste your time hunting for that coat in Paris unless you have a large amount of money to spend for it. You will find what you want in St. Paul’s Churchyard or Oxford street. London, but not in Paris at your price.
1909 lampshade hat, Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art
In thinking of Paris one’s thoughts turn instinctively to hats and gowns. Certainly it is the place where the fashions originate and whence they are imitated, but come you and walk along the principal shopping streets of Paris and look in the windows during the months when Americans most congregate there. Let us fancy it is August, and we must return to New York in September. I defy any American woman with good taste and with mind not warped with the idea that anything that comes from Paris must be right, to find displayed in any Paris window a hat marked below 25f. that she would wear in the backest of New York’s back streets and not feel ashamed to meet her friends. Now 25f. is the equivalent of $5, and the shop windows of New York are bursting with beautiful $5 hats at this season and at all other seasons. I say at once these hats are not “exclusive.” Buying one, I would not feel at all sure that wearing it to the matinee I would not become amazed and dazed by seeing myself in exact duplicate sitting in front of me. But the same thing could happen in Paris. The point is that the $5 “window hat” of New York is to be preferred to the same thing in Paris.
The only way to procure a hat in Paris is to go inside a shop that does not look like a shop, and tell the madame in charge that you have been sent there by Mrs. So-and-So, who bought her hats there last year. Then you will have brought forth from secret receptacles wonderful specimens of millinery that fairly turn your head, and if you are able to pay $15 or more, you will obtain a real “creation” for which you would pay a third more in New York.
In the matter of gowns one has the same experience. Really well-made and attractive gowns are not often displayed in the windows, nor can you see them in the shops except by special maneuvering. If you can afford to patronize the shops of the Rue de la Paix (and you must be a millionaire to be able to do so), you will certainly see gowns that are gowns, although even those that are shown to you–if you speak with an American accent–are not at all like the gowns that are displayed for the inspection of Madame la France. A special line of gowns is originated for Americans, as any American woman would soon see who, after having bought her gown in August, should go back to Paris in November and note what is being worn by the real Parisienne.
**
Oh, yes, I know all about those “little dressmakers” and those “little milliners” of Paris. That is to say, I know nothing whatever about them, except by hearsay, and have never been able to find them, though I have taken a half dozen taximeters in hot pursuit of them, thrusting the addresses given me by my English and American friends in the very faces of the red-faced cabbies and demanding to be driven to them instantly. Somehow they have always moved away from the addresses that have been given me, or their prices have increased tremendously since the foregoing summer, or I have made a mistake, indeed I have. Madame never, no, never, made a gown for the American mademoiselle under 300f., nevaire, no, nevaire!
Myself, I came back to New York recently without the gowns I had intended to buy, and am now rejoicing in the fittings of my little Irish-American dressmaker, who, though she knows it not, is quite as clever as the “little French dressmaker,” and is able to do me very well indeed for the American equivalent of 300f.
I do not depreciate Paris as a center of art and fashion. I think that every American woman who is able to do so should visit Paris. Certainly she ought to go through the principal shops, visit the great opera house, the art galleries and wander about the fascinating streets. Paris gets a hold on one, and to her one returns again and again. So great is that hold that, with but a few hundred dollars, many an American and English girl will remain there and suffer untold discomforts for the mere sake of living and perhaps, “studying” in Paris. She will eat one-franc dinners, that are a horror to remember, sleep on beds that for their hardness penetrate into the very bones and marrow and cause a lifelong ache. She will wander about the Louvre Museum, copying pictures for the price of a Latin quarter meal. She will climb seven flights of stairs to her attic abode and sleep five in a room, each on a four-folded quilt in a corner, and go bathless for a fortnight at a time. She will, under these circumstances, write home letters to the old folk by the country fire side or the city radiator, telling of the glories of Paris, her ambitions, her chance for success. And surely Paris has her glories, her chances, and sometimes her fulfillment of ambitions.
But Paris is not cheap. If one desires ordinary comforts one cannot live there more cheaply than in New York. The far-famed flats of the Latin quarter, where one gets four rooms with a kitchenette for $12 a month, are comfortless, desolate and dirty when compared with the cheap tenement house apartments of New York.
Paris is the city for those who have learned, or are sure they are willing and able to learn, the art of “doing without.” All its conveniences are expensive, most especially such conveniences as baths, laundry work, good beds, cleanliness.
There is no food so deliciously cooked and served as one finds in Paris, but food of this sort is not particularly cheap. Your American art-student may find many a one-franc dinner served in the open air along the boulevards (including “wine,” if she is fond of vinegar), but it is the sort of dinner she would not eat at home. She can find rooms in the Latin quarter for 25f. a month that is to say, for $5. She must climb many stairs to them, dress by the light of a solitary candle (for which she will pay five times as much as she will pay in New York), and shiver during the winter for want of a fire. She will either wash her own clothes or wear them soiled, unless she can pay an exorbitant price to have them laundered. She can put up with these discomforts and many other things too many to mention, while she “sees Paris” and “studies art.” If she is made of the right stuff and does not break down physically, it will do her good and perhaps make a strong, capable woman of her, destroying certain provincial notions that are death to advancement. Unless she becomes so wedded to Paris that she cannot leave it, she will return to her native land and her own people all the better and more interesting for the experience she has had. She can laugh over it afterward and warn her friends what they have to expect if they go to Paris without a really snug little income.
I do not discourage any American girl or woman from going to Paris. I hope I merely lift my voice against the strangely prevalent notion that Paris is a surprisingly cheap city, that its shops are especially attractive, that one can really get more for one’s money than in New York or in other large American cities. For this is a delusion.
Pittsburgh [PA] Daily Post 21 March 1909: p. 33
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Well. That is “telling them,” as they say in the States. Blunt Yankee candour. Or perhaps the author was paid for this “puff piece” by the New York Chamber of Commerce.
The author is cynical about the “little dressmakers” of Paris, but does not breath a word about the salons of the House of Worth, Paquin, Poiret, Lanvin, Doucet, or Callot Soeurs. Mrs Daffodil raises a skeptical eye-brow. Perhaps those establishments felt that their client lists were filled and they did not feel it necessary to pay to be “puffed.”
While Mrs Daffodil has heard of exploitation in the work-rooms of couture houses, she wonders how it compared with the sweat-shops of New York for making dainty surplice-shaped nightgowns and smart machine-made summer blouses.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Two Worth ball gowns, c. 1892 Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Collection.
AN ART OF FRANCE.
THE MARVELOUS CREATIONS OF PARIS’ MAN MILLINERS. What Happens to the Customer Who Seeks Fashion in the Shops of the Dressmakers
Composing a Costume
The Models and Their Duties
Passing an Inspection
The Visit of the Autocrat
How Even the Bravest of Society Fares In the Realm of Style.
There is no outside show nor elegantly-dressed window at the Paris dressmaker’s. The great dressmaker or couturier is not a simple tradesman but an artist. His studios–for he is a man!–generally occupy two or three flats in one of those plain-fronted Restoration houses which line the Rue de la Paix, the Rue Taitbout, or the Rue Louis Legrand. Entering by a large porte-cochére as broad as it is high, you mount a carpeted staircase with walls of simili marble, or simply painted yellow. Through the open doors you see here the packing-room, there workrooms, with squadrons of girls sewing and handling piles of silk on long tables under the superintendence of a lean and severe-looking woman in black. The first reception-room is somber; the walls are hung with tapestry representing landscapes in Normandy and Brittany; the folding doors are painted black; on the chimney-piece are huge bronze-zinc candelabra and a clock surrounded by a nickel-plated Diana; the carpet is dingy and worn. To the left, seated at a desk, is a blonde and effeminate bookkeeper. Moving around the tables charged with piles of stuffs are one or two salesmen–M. Cyprien or M. Alexandre. The head salesman, an elegant person, dressed in black silk in the summer and black satin in the winter, receives the visitors and puts them in communication with the great couturier himself, or with one of his leading women assistants, termed premiéres.
The couturier is a curious creature, a great artist. Pompadour had her tailor Supplis, who is said to have been a designer of genius; the eighteenth century had Mme. Cafaxe, the famous modiste-couturiere, whose bills were as enormous as those of her successors at the present day; but the conditions of feminine elegance have changed since then. The grandmothers were content with spring, summer, autumn, and winter toilets, with a stock of gowns, mantles, and headdresses of a material appropriate to each season. Worth, Pingat, and Aurelly, the three great couturiers who directed feminine elegance under the empire into the paths of art and taste, introduced the “costume” element into dress: and now, instead of dressing his customers four times a year, the modern couturier dresses them ten, fifteen, and twenty times a year. A woman nowadays orders a dress for this ball, another for another ball; she wants a costume for the Grand Prix race-day; a gown for a certain garden party; a special costume for a yachting excursion; a dozen costumes for the seaside, etc. The dressmaker collects the engravings of Eisen, Debucourt, and Moreau; he advances money to mount looms at Lyons to create new stuffs; he keeps an army of brodeuses (embroidery women) at work to make unique trimmings; he examines and confesses his customers, studies them morally and physically, and invents becoming and original toilettes by the hundred. Thanks to these great artists (!) marvelous “lampas” have been brought to light. Lyons has made faithful reproductions of the most admirable brocades, of the most sumptuous plushes, and of silks with golden tissues and all that was so exquisitely magnificent in times gone by. Ex-Empress Eugénie used to be one of the greatest “coquettes,” as regards costume, under the second Empire. Princess Mathilde, Princess of Sagan, Princess of Metternich, Countess of Pourtales, and the Marquise of Galiffet were then the leaders of fashion.
The Dressmaker a Confidant.
Thanks to his continuous relations with all these noble women, the dressmaker becomes often the confidant and even the banker of some of his clients. In a word he occupies a novel and peculiar position on the confines of society. Living in an atmosphere of caprice, he is himself capricious; breathing an air impregnated with perfumes, he is often a victim of chronic neuralgia, which increases tenfold the natural irritability of the artistic nature., The couturier reigns over his elegant customers like a tyrant who knows that he is indispensable. And in truth he is the great arbiter of universal elegance, the oracle of the most beautiful women. From Oceanica to Peru, from Suez to Panama, and from Petersburg to the Cape of Good Hope large trunks arrive, carrying to the daughters of Eve the handsomest “chiffons,” prettily ribboned and saturated, as it were, with that exquisite atmosphere of the Rue de la Paix which has become in a certain sense the temple of all luxury, of all delicacy, of all refinement! And how delighted are they, the poor exiled ones, who dwell thousands of miles from the sacred precincts. How they untie each knot of ribbon with infinite precaution, like devotees arranging a relic. Their curious eyes devour the glittering stuffs. Hardly do they dare touch the costume itself, which when lifted from the depths of the trunk expands its leaves like a flower whose enraptured corolla blooms beneath the gorgeous rays of the sun. Her heart beats; she blushes, for the emotion is sweet–it is coquetry!
House of Worth Paris salon.
It is between 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon. In the reception-room the first woman attendant (Madame la première vendeuse!–such is her official appellation) divides her attention between a dozen women who are looking at the new silks, handling the piles of lace and artificial flowers strewn on the tables, eying curiously half-finished skirts and bodices without sleeves that lie in heaps on the chairs and chattering in strange slang: ” Velvet is again the fashion this winter.” (On est au velours cet hiver!) “Faille is not the mode, I see,” “Surah corkscrews so awfully.” In the adjoining rooms are seen the demoiselles-mannequins, young woman automates, whose business it is to show off in their perfect figure dresses and mantels. With a weary, empty expression the automate walks silently over the thick carpets from room to room and from morning to night, wearing now a court mantle, now the dress of an American millionaire’s wife, now the robe of a queen. Her capital is her figure and her bearing, and her salary is proportioned to her elegance, rising in some cases to $2,000 a year. All languages and all accents are heard, and elegance of all grades meets in the drawing-rooms of a great couturier–the blue-blooded aristocrat, the princesses of the Comédie Francaise Theater, exotic parvenue, and the fashionable demimondaine. Each in turn passes into one of the small trying-on rooms, draped with blue or brown satin, and heated to green-house temperature. The elegant woman, partly undressed, and wearing simply her corset and a short silk dress trimmed with lace, waits in front of the looking-glass. The dress arrives in fragments–a queer mixture of silk, stiff muslin, lining, and loose threads. First comes the corsagère, or woman attendant on the bodice; she takes a regular mold of the torso in coarse canvas, such as the tailors use to pad coats; on this mold the bodice is built, and at the second trying on it is brought all sewn and whaleboned, but only basted below the arms and at the shoulder. Crac! Crac! The corsagère rips and rips away, and then proceeds to pin and lace and make cabalistic signs with a yellow pencil, cutting and slashing here and there with wonderful surety of eye and hand. “Does Madame feel her corset?” she finally asks; and if it is right, Madame replies, satisfied: “Yes ; I’m at home in it!” The Next Step Toward the Finale.
Next comes the jupière (woman attendant on the skirt). She has charge of the relevés and the details of the train. Then follows the specialist who is charged with what is called the “mounting of the skirt,” and who drapes the skirt on a lining of silk, and crawls on her knees round, and round the woman for half an hour at a time. Dressmaking is perhaps one of the few arts in which the subordinate workers still show a certain amour propre and something of the artist’s ambition. In their light-fingered collaboration with the imagination of the masculine couturier they delight to produce masterpieces, and spare no pains, especially when they have to do with a woman of fine natural figure–“toute faite,” as they say–who has not the artificial dressmaker’s waist.
Meantime the voice of the master is heard as he comes out of one of the trying-on rooms. He is storming at one of the leading women because a “ruche” has been substituted for a flounce, and because a light-colored fur has been put on the mantle of the Countess de Z., a delicate blonde! It is not the creation of models that is difficult; it is to get the models executed. “I am not seconded. The whole mantle will have to be remade. It is enough to drive one crazy! Be good enough to tell M. Cyprien to inquire who is responsible for the error.” And the great artist passes into another room, where several women are waiting in their half-finished dresses for a word of approval from the master, or a touch from his magic hand that will perfect a seam or crumple a mass of tulle into a vision of beauty.
One woman will humbly call the great artist’s attention to a certain fold in her Watteau train. The great artist will shrug his shoulders, and say brusquely, “Madame la Baronne, you look like a broomstick in that robe. Take it off, and come again tomorrow. I will compose something else for you. I am not in the vein today.” He salutes and passes on to another woman. But he cannot digest the patent fact that some one attached to his staff was not aware that “Watteaus” were for blondes who are not too slim and “Violas” (the sober draperies and the rich stuffs of the seventeenth century) were attributed to grave-looking and severe figures and to those that have some majesty about them. As to Madame la Baronne she will take off her robe in disgust and console herself by going to try on her new riding habit in the “Salon des Amazons.” This room is draped in green velvet and adorned with side-saddles, whips, and stirrups; on the table are rolls of dark cloth and silk hats, with green, brown, and blue veils; in the middle is a life-size wooden horse, on which the Baroness mounts to have the folds of her amazon, or riding-habit, arranged. An insipid blonde young man is specially told off to aid the woman mount the dummy steed.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Collection
The final trying-on of the finished costumes is a great day in the life of all modern French élégantes, who often invite their friends to the fête. Then you hear in the vestibule or in reception-room such orders as this: “Show M. X. in for Mme. de F.’s trying-on.” “Show M. de Y. in for Countess M.’s trying-on–“for there are men, and especially painters, who are excellent judges in dressmaking, or “chiffons,” as they call the art. Countess M., aided by one of the young women in black, puts on first the skirts which have been cut and made with as much care and skill as the costume itself, for it is an axiom in modern dressmaking that the underclothing is half the battle. Then, having donned her dress, she appeals triumphant in the drawing-room where her friends are waiting, and in the stuffy little room, the air of which is thick with the perfumes of ylang-ylang, heliotrope, jonquil, poudre de riz, and odor di femina, the chorus of admiration breaks out, and the whole staff of the establishment is admitted to contemplate the masterpiece. The première, the chef des jupes, the chef des corsages, the chef des garnisseuses, etc., each in turn opens the door and with a coaxing intonation of voice asks permission to enter.
It Is a Daily Scene.
And so, day after day during the season, there is a perpetual frou-frou of silk and a chattering of musical voices on the staircase and in the salons, and day after day the effeminate bookkeeper adds to the total of the bills– which will be paid who knows when and who knows how? There are women whose bills amount in a year to as much as $30,000 and $40,000. This is enormous, the philosophic observer may remark to the great artist, who will reply in his most delicate and flute-like voice: “Yes, yes! But only think, I have just terminated an embroidered mantle for Countess K. which costs $6,000.” And hailing one of the automates who chances to be passing by, he says: “Mademoiselle, will you kindly go and fetch the mantle for Countess K. to show to Monsieur. Is it not lovely? Look how it falls!” And the master tumbles to his knees in ecstasy before his last creation.
The type of the great couturier has been put upon the stage in its grotesque aspect by Gondinet in his comedy “Paris,” and by “Gyp” (Madame de Martel) in her Gymnase piece, “Autour du Mariage.” But the purely artistic and the psychological aspect of the artist would repay study, and if there were a Balzac living nowadays it would certainly tempt him. The principal Parisian dressmakers are all uncommon personalities. Their names are Messrs. Worth, Felix, Pingat, Roger, Laferrière (Sarah Bernhardt’s preference), Pasguier, Doucet, Rouff, Morin, and Mme. Rodrigues. They are skillful beyond expression in drapery stuff, harmonizing colors, and creating those marvels of silk, and lace, and tulle, which constitute the inimitable toilettes of the Parisiennes, the model to which the civilized world still looks for its highest inspiration. It has been said, and the statement is not devoid of truth, that the leading lady dressmaker in Paris treats all artists and literary men as her equals. She, one day composed a toilette for Mme. Alexandre Dumas, and in complimenting her upon it, M. Dumas said to her: “Madame, you are the Meissonier of dressmaking.”
Chicago [IL] Tribune 9 April 1892: p. 16
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: One is not quite certain what M. Dumas was intimating. Meissonier was a painter of sieges, military manoeuvres, and Napoleonic battle scenes….
Although unnamed, the “man milliner” is, of course Charles Frederick Worth, the autocrat of the cutting-table. He was born in England, but came to France, drawn by the allure of Paris fashions. Strangely, while he first rose to fame in creating exquisite toilettes for the Empress Eugenie, he was never summoned to Windsor or Buckingham Palace to dress Queen Victoria.
Worth might have been called the “millionairess whisperer.” His gift for self-promotion and supreme self-confidence allowed him to dictate to his stupendously wealthy clients exactly what they would wear and how they would wear it. If he did not like the look or figure of a client, he would summarily dismiss her. He seems to have appreciated rich American ladies, saying, famously, that they “have faith, figures, and francs – faith to believe in me, figures that I can put into shape, francs to pay my bills”.
After Worth’s untimely death in 1895, his sons continued the business and the firm’s association with Lyon, creating exquisitely beautiful silk brocades, exclusive to the House of Worth.
Jean-Philippe Worth butterfly gown, 1898, Metropolitan Museum of Art. The skirt has been woven a la disposition.
Mrs Daffodil has often posted about couture and dressmaking, such as this post on the rivalry between M. Poiret and the Queen of Chiffon, Lucile.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
British Association for Victorian Studies Postgraduate Pages, hosted by Carys Hudson (Queen's University Belfast) and Hollie Geary-Jones (University of Chester)
Mrs Daffodil Digresses 