Last updated La Marchande de modes, 1769 engraving by Robert Bénard
Marchande de modes was a French Guild organisation for women fashion merchants or milliners, normally meaning ornaments for headdresses, hats and dresses, within the city of Paris, active from August 1776 until 1791.[1] It played a dominating role within the commercial life and fashion industry of France during the last decades prior to the French Revolution. One of the most famous members was Rose Bertin.
A fashion merchant was a businessperson specialising in the production and the sale of fashion accessories, especially adornments for hairstyles and gowns. The profession emerged in the early eighteenth century and reached its height at the end of the same century. The women and occasional men who practised as fashion merchants played a central role in the diffusion of styles in this period.
The profession was defined by being formalized in a guild with the name Marchandes de modes (English: "Fashion Merchant") between 1776 and 1791.[2] It was the 4th guild in Paris open for women after the Maîtresses marchandes lingères, the Maîtresses couturières and the Maîtresses bouquetières, and was abolished with the abolition of the guild system in 1791.[3]
The profession of fashion merchant emerged from the guild of mercers around 1760–1765. At first, the role was described as a "talent" possessed by the wives of mercers.[4] In eighteenth-century France, the corporations of tailors and then seamstresses held a monopoly on the creation of a garment. Fashion merchants usually only worked on the ornamentation of clothing that had already been stitched together, although they could produce certain small items (such as belts, cravats, bows, shawls, capes, etc.).[4] In the course of their work, fashion merchants used a variety of materials including taffeta, gauze, feathers, ribbons, lace, artificial flowers, embroidery, passementerie, and furs – therefore working with a multitude of suppliers and artisans.
In August 1776, the reorganisation of guild structures saw the creation of a guild for the "fashion merchants, feather-dressers, and flower-makers of the city and the suburbs of Paris" with Marie-Jeanne [Rose] Bertin at its head.[5] This new guild formally established fashion merchants as independent from mercers. Technically, the guild of fashion merchants was exclusively female, although some men did also practise as fashion merchants since their wives belonged to the guild (such as Jean-Joseph Beaulard). From 1776 onwards, it was no longer necessary to be the wife of a mercer to work as a fashion merchant.
In the eighteenth century, the silhouette of fashionable dress changed relatively little. Novelty therefore came from the ornamentation of clothing, which changed rapidly according to fashion and helped to express personal and wider social identity. The task fell to fashion merchants to 'stitch and arrange daily the fashions that they and their customers dreamed up'.[4]
While the adornment of gowns and the arrangement of hairstyles constituted the core of fashion merchants' activities, fashion merchants also played a pivotal role in the diffusion of style. Their ideas therefore influenced many other professions such as tailors, seamstresses, and linen sellers.
Coiffure Belle-Poule
The years 1770–1780 saw an acceleration of change in fashionable adornment, with hairstyles becoming emblematic of the constant drive for novelty. Thanks to fashion, hair became a site for the staging of identity and current affairs. The coiffure à la belle poule is a spectacular example of the relationship between news and fashion. The hairstyle integrated a model of a French frigate named La Belle Poule which became famous after winning a naval battle against the English in 1778. This period also saw numerous caricatures disseminated across Europe which made fun of the height of fashionable hairstyles. Although the work of fashion merchants was therefore not universally admired, it was universally discussed.
Mlle Bertin and her contemporaries
In the 1770s, there were only a handful of fashion merchants, but the profession expanded quickly in the 1780s in Paris and across France. Some of the main figures of the age included Marie-Jeanne [Rose] Bertin, Jean-Joseph Beaulard, and Mademoiselle Alexandre. Louis-Sébastien Mercier dedicated a chapter of his Tableau de Paris to fashion merchants, mentioning Beaulard and Alexandre by name, and claiming that 'the work of fashion is an art; a cherished art, triumphant, which in this century has received honours and distinctions'.[6]
Perhaps the most famous fashion merchant was Mlle Bertin, who enjoyed considerable notoriety during her career. Bertin was the foremost supplier of Marie-Antoinette's wardrobe, and developed a close relationship with the Queen, so much so that she became known as the 'Minister of Fashion'.[citation needed] Bertin's dramatic rise to fame from relatively humble origins in Picardy to the inner circle of the Queen alarmed members of the aristocracy, including Marie-Antoinette's lady-in-waitingMadame Campan. Campan believed that 'the mere admission of a milliner into the house of the Queen was followed by evil consequences to her Majesty' –namely, Marie-Antoinette's growing obsession with fashion.[7] Although Bertin had considerable success during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, her business suffered during the Revolution.
Legacy
The considerable status of the fashion merchant, especially the female fashion merchant, began to decline in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, a handful of fashion merchants continued to supply the French royal court, including Louis Hippolyte Leroy and Marie-Françoise Corot. The influential role of fashion merchants in disseminating new trends paved the way for the great designers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Charles Frederick Worth and Coco Chanel.
↑ James-Sarazin, Ariane et Lapasin, Régis, Gazette des atours de Marie-Antoinette, Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux - Archives nationales, 2006
↑ James-Sarazin, Ariane et Lapasin, Régis, Gazette des atours de Marie-Antoinette, Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux - Archives nationales, 2006
↑ James-Sarazin, Ariane et Lapasin, Régis, Gazette des atours de Marie-Antoinette, Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux - Archives nationales, 2006
1 2 3 F.A. Garsault, Art du tailleur, contenant le tailleur d'habit d'homme; les culottes de peau; le tailleur de corps de femmes et d'enfants; et la marchande de modes, Paris, 1769.
Benjamin Alvarez-Araujo, Adélaïde Henriette Damoville, dite Mme Eloffe (1759-1805). Autour d'une marchande de modes imaginaire, mémoire de Master 2 sous la direction de Laurence Croq, Université Paris-Nanterre, 2020.
James-Sarazin, Ariane et Lapasin, Régis (2006). Gazette des atours de Marie-Antoinette. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux - Archives nationales.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Kimberley Chrisman-Campbell (2015). Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Clare Haru Crowston (2013). Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France. Durham: Duke University Press.
Natacha Coquery (1998). L’ hôtel aristocratique: le marché du luxe à Paris au XVIIIe siècle. Histoire moderne 39. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne.
Jennifer Jones (1996). ‘Coquettes and Grisettes: Women Buying and Selling in Ancien Régime Paris’. In The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, edited by Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough, 25–53. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Daniel Roche (1989). La culture des apparences. Paris: Fayard.
Michelle Sapori (2010). Rose Bertin, couturière de Marie-Antoinette. Paris: Perrin.
Michelle Sapori (2004). Rose Bertin, ministre des modes de Marie-Antoinette. Paris: Institut Français de la Mode - Regard.
Carolyn Sargentson (1996). Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris. London and Malibu: Victoria and Albert Museum in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Related Research Articles
Marie Antoinette was the last Queen of France prior to the French Revolution and the French First Republic. Marie Antoinette was the wife of Louis XVI. Born Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria, she was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She married Louis XVI, Dauphin of France, in May 1770 at age 14. She then became the Dauphine of France. On 10 May 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became queen.
Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry was the last maîtresse-en-titre of King Louis XV of France. She was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution on accusations of treason — particularly being suspected of assisting émigrés to flee from the Revolution. She is also known as "Mademoiselle Vaubernier".
Hat-making or millinery is the design, manufacture and sale of hats and other headwear. A person engaged in this trade is called a milliner or hatter.
Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron, Duchess of Polignac was the favourite of Marie Antoinette, whom she met when she was presented at the Palace of Versailles in 1775, the year after Marie Antoinette became the Queen of France. She was considered one of the great beauties of pre-Revolutionary society, but her extravagance and exclusivity earned her many enemies.
Marie-Jeanne "Rose" Bertin was a French fashion merchant. She was particularly noted for her work with Queen Marie Antoinette. Bertin was the first celebrated French fashion designer and is widely credited with having brought fashion and haute couture to the forefront of popular culture.
Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan was a French educator, writer and Lady's maid. In the service of Marie Antoinette before and during the French Revolution, she was afterwards headmistress of the first Maison d'éducation de la Légion d'honneur, appointed by Napoleon in 1807 to promote the education of girls.
The pouf or pouffe also "toque" is a hairstyle and a hairstyling support deriving from 18th-century France. It was made popular by the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette (1755–1793), when she wore it in June 1775 at the coronation of her husband Louis XVI, triggering a wave of French noblewomen to wear their hair in the same manner. The hairstyle would become popular across Europe in the 1770s.
Marie Antoinette Queen of France is a 1956 French-Italian historical drama film directed by Jean Delannoy who co-wrote the screenplay with Pierre Erlanger and Bernard Zimmer. The film stars Michèle Morgan and Richard Todd. It was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
Haute couture is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design. The term haute couture generally refers to a specific type of upper garment common in Europe during the 16th to the 18th century, or to the upper portion of a modern dress to distinguish it from the skirt and sleeves. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Paris became the centre of a growing industry that focused on making outfits from high-quality, expensive, often unusual fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable of sewers—often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Couture translates literally from French as "dressmaking", sewing, or needlework and is also used as a common abbreviation of haute couture and can often refer to the same thing in spirit.
Léonard-Alexis Autié, also Autier, often referred to simply as Monsieur Léonard, was the favourite hairdresser of Queen Marie Antoinette and in 1788–1789 founded the Théâtre de Monsieur, "the first resident theatre in France to produce a year-round repertory of Italian opera."
Angélique-Marie Élisabeth Émilie de Matignon, née Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, married Countesse Goyon de Matignon and known in history as Madame de Matignon, was a prominent fashion figure during the French Ancien Régime, known for her extravagant hairdressing expenses.
Galerie des Modes et Costumes Français is a series of fashion and costume plates that was distributed in Paris from 1778 to 1787, during the reign of King Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette. The first collected volume, which was produced in 1779, had a title page which bore an allegorical illustration as well as the full title of the collection: Gallerie des modes et des costumes français dessinés d'après nature, Gravés par le plus Célèbres Artistes en ce genre, et colorés avec le plus grand soin par Madame Le Beau. Ouvrage commence en l'année 1778. A Paris, chez le Srs Esnauts et Rapilly rue St. Jacques à la Ville de coutances. Avec priv. Du Roi. Importantly, this lengthier epithet indicates that the engravings of the Galerie were created "d'après nature," or "after nature," meaning that they were intended to represent what was actually worn in the streets of Paris during the latter part of the eighteenth century.
Maîtresses marchandes lingères was a French guild organisation for women linen draper seamstresses and hemp merchants within the city of Paris, active from the Middle Ages until 1791. It was one of only three guilds open to women in Paris prior to 1776, the other two being the Maitresses bouquetieres and the Maîtresses couturières.
Maîtresses couturières was a French guild organisation for seamstresses within the city of Paris, active from 30 March 1675 until 1791. It was one of only three guilds open to women in Paris prior to 1776, the other two being the Maitresses bouquetieres and the Maîtresses marchandes lingères.
The Communauté des maîtresses bouquetières et marchandes chapelières en fleurs was a French Guild organisation for female fresh flower sellers within the city of Paris, active from August 1677 until 1791.
Adélaïde Henriette Damoville was a French fashion merchant. She was a favorite milliner of Queen Marie Antoinette.
Mademoiselle Alexandre, was a French fashion merchant.
Jean Joseph Beaulard, known as Le Sieur Beaulard, was a French fashion merchant and fashion designer.
Marie Madeleine Duchapt, also known as only La Duchapt, was a celebrated French fashion merchant. Active from the 1730s to 1760s, she succeeded Françoise Leclerc as the leading marchande de modes in Paris. She has been referred to as the first famous fashion celebrity of the Parisian fashion business, and was a predecessor of Rose Bertin.
Mademoiselle Pagelle was a French fashion designer (Couturier) and fashion merchant.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
![Marie-Jeanne [Rose] Bertin, 1747-1813, fashion merchant. Rose Bertin Trinquesse.png](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Rose_Bertin_Trinquesse.png/220px-Rose_Bertin_Trinquesse.png)
