It is true that the majority of fashion designers today are men. But it may surprise you to know that up until the end of the 19th century, the French fashion world was dominated by women dressmakers or couturières. As all of Europe looked to France before draping themselves in the latest trends, King Louis XIV signed a royal edict in 1675 which recognised the rights of female dressmakers and since then, as seamstresses, miliners or designers, women have played an integral role in the development of fashion. Here are seven fabulous French fashion houses, all created by fabulous French women whose designs dominated the Belle Époque in Paris.
Madeleine Laferrière (1825 – c.1900)
Not much is known today about Madeleine Laferrière; even the dates of her birth and death are an assumption. However, her fashion house, Maison de Laferrière, found at 28 Rue Taitbout, Paris, was much celebrated in the mid to late 19th century and her designs graced the bodies of the French aristocracy and European royalty. A Laferrière dress was elegant yet exquisite, with fine detailing and trimming, and always of exceptional quality. Queen Maud of Norway (grandaughter of Queen Victoria) and her mother, Princess Alexandra of Wales (who was to become Queen Alexandra) had wardrobes stuffed full of Laferrière dresses .
Silk and satin evening dress from around 1900, worn by Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The dress is made up of a bodice and skirt of figured stain, decorated with imitation pearls, diamantes and spangles, mounted on boned silk foundation, padded, cotton gauze and lace. Follow this link to see more detail of this dress at the V & A musuem collection.
Her clients also included the Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, the women of the French court, and famous courtesans and actresses. Sarah Bernhardt, the most celebrated actress in Belle Epoque Paris, wore a great many Laferrière costumes in her performances.
An 1888 edition of The Woman’s World notes “the old maison Laferrière, so renowned during the Empire, is still one of the leading firms where we can always apply for reliable suggestions as to the best styles in vogue, and the best to adopt according to individual types and circumstances. Here, too, the showrooms are full of delightful creations, prepared especially for the numerous festivities given on New Year’s Day. A costume for formal visiting is worth mentioning: a bronze velvet redingote with double breasted fronts, extending as stole ends to the edge of the skirt, which is in kilted faille bordered with a velvet band. And to wear with this quiet and tasteful dress out of doors a cloak is added of glossy brick-coloured plush … Verily our eyes are dazzled with all the soft shimmerings of the costly materials, the glowing reflection of the colours, and the brilliancy of the jet and tinsel trimmings. Nothing can be more gorgeous than this metallic embroidery, glittering with the brightest shades on a reception gown of olive-green velvet, with its skirt striaght at the back, and gracefully draped in front between side panels, round which are arranged the flashing ornaments”.
When Madeleine Laferrière died is unclear, but contemporary accounts show that the business continued without her into the 1900s. Maison Laferrière’s creations were among those displayed by the Collectivité de la Couture at the Universal Exhibition of 1900 held in Paris.
Armandine Fresnais-Margaine (1835-1899) and Jeanne Margaine-Lacroix (1868–1930)
Armandine Fresnais-Margaine was a seamstress married to a watchmaker, and created the House of Margaine in the year of her daughter’s birth, 1868. It became a successful maison de couture, achieving a gold medal for their creations at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889. But it was Jeanne-Victorine Margaine, following her mother’s footsteps into the world of fashion, who made the business a household name. Adding Lacroix to her name on her marriage, Jeanne also changed the name of the fashion house to Margaine-Lacroix on the death of her mother in 1899.
In 1908, the world learned of the House of Margaine-Lacroix when their dresses made the front page from London to New York. Making an appearance at the Longchamp Racecourse, where more attention was usually paid to fashion than to racing, three models became the centre of attention as they strolled along nonchanantly in tight fitting dresses stretched sensuously over hourglass figures, supposedly without a corset. Outrageous! The journal L’Illustration, who published a photograph of the models on its front page, noted that, “On all sides, from all corners. of the race course … went up cries of distress and cries of revolt!”
The press likened the women to ‘Les Merveilleuses’ of the Directorate of the aftermath of the French Revolution, who caused scandal with their diaphanous Greek gowns rings on their toes. Named the ‘Sylphide’ dress, on the outside its flimsy fabrics clung to the body and inside, its ingenious lining and reinforced bodice allowed for much more freedom of movement.
“It was beautifully molded to her body, from the breast down. One could almost believe that the dress was the sole garment that adorned her shapely person. There was certainly no room for frills or frou-frou, for lingerie of any kind. On the right side the skirt was split to the waist line, caught together loosely with ornamental buttons down as far as the knee… beneath could be seen a silken underskirt, absolutely plain and clinging as tightly to the person of the wearter as, say, paper does to the wall.”
Journalist from 1908, quoted in Caroline Evans, The Mechanical Smile – Modernism and the First Fashion Shows in France and America, 1900-1929, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2013
Jeanne Margaine-Lacroix went on to create the Sylphide sheath and the Sylphide bralette, which provided support but removed any trace of the corset from the eye. The design remained in fashion for several years and was instrumental in changing body ideals before WWI.
Jeanne Margaine-Lacroix died in 1930 in Chatou and was buried with her mother and husband in the Lacroix family grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris
Louise Chéruit (1866-1935)
Louise Chéruit opened her fashion house in 1906. Within a few years she was a household name and her sophisticated designs graced the illustrated pages of the luxurious monthly fashion magazine Gazette du Bon Ton, of which she was one of the founders. A fashion story in a leading New York newspaper acknowledged Chéruit as the creator of a full-skirted syle which led to the prevailing silhouette of the war years.
She was often described as an elegant and beautiful woman, which worked wonderfully to increase her business when she wore her own designs to all the fashionable places in Belle Epoque Paris, the opera, the theatre, and to the races at Longchamp.
Madame Chéruit is “a Louis XIV woman because she has the daintiness, the extravangant tastes, the exquisite charm, and the art of those French ladies who went gaily through the pre-revolution epoch”
Vogue, 1915
Chéruit is as artistic as ever…her evening wraps are famous, and many of them, whether of fur, velvet or satin, are veiled with chiffon.
Woman’s Home Companion, Christmas 1909
Madame Chéruit retired from the company in 1914, but her maison de couture continued to exist under the direction of two former designers. Her atelier, located at the exclusive place Vendôme, was taken over by designer Elsa Schiparelli in 1935.
Caroline Reboux 1837-1927
An article in the 29 May, 1948 edition of L’Illustration described a little girl in her maisonette rustique in Montmartre, gazing in wonder at the young workers on the boulevards to Paris every morning where she imagined them creating gorgeous confections at the famous fashion houses. This was the world she was destined to inhabit, but it was millinery, or hat-making, that was to be her raison d’être.
Caroline Reboux was “Queen of the Milliners” for over fifty years. Her hats were synonymous with Paris style, both before and after the Belle Epoque. She opened her first shop in 1865, and another boutique in the heart of fashion, Rue de la Paix, in 1870, where she employed up to 150 women in various workshops. As American women clamoured for the latest Paris fashion, she opened further stores in Chicago and New York.
The Austrian Princess Metternich, socialite and 19th century trend-setter, was supposedly enamoured with Reboux hats and introduced the Empress Eugénie to the ‘Queen of the Milliners’, where she soon became a royal favourite.
There is some debate over who ‘invented’ the famous felt cloche hat, with its unstructured shape and minimalist style, but Reboux is generally believed to have been instrumental in its creation. Her designs were still very much in demand in the 20th century, as Wallis Simpson wore a Reboux hat to her wedding in 1937 to Edward VIII.
Jeanne Paquin, 1869-1936
Jeanne Marie Charlotte Beckers began her dressmaker training at a young age. Married to Isidore Jacob René, in 1891 they expanded a former menswear company into Paquin, the darling of Belle Époque maisons de couture. Their boutique in the glamorous Rue de la Paix next to the houses of Worth and Doucet saw many stylish women step over the threshold to be draped in Jeanne’s signature look: elegant black coats enlivened with colourful lining and trimmed with fur, vividly coloured embroidery or delicate lace.
Madame Paquin is pretty, she is gifted, she is charming. Everyone is fond of Madame Paquin. From the first this clever and ornamental young couple followed a new system. No haughty seclusion, no barred doors, at the Maison Paquin. Madame was probably met at the door by Monsieur Paquin himself, and to be met by Paquin was a treat.
1900 Paris guide book
But her dresses were not at all severe, with their soft swirls of lace, tulle and flowery garlands using scarlet or sea-blue rather than the pastels used by other designers at the turn of the century. A decade later her evening wear was all about exoticism with chinoiserie fabrics and headresses of Chantilly lace shaped like butterfly wings. However, she always kept in mind the day to day needs of clothing, once remarking on “those Parisians who must battle with the Métro”. Her hobble skirts had ingenious hidden pleats so that one could actually walk in them. The Lady’s Pictorial commented: “It is, appropriately enough, a woman who has solved the great skirt problem of the day, and devised a style which, while exceedingly smart, is not in the least extreme”.
Described by a journalist of the time as “the most commercial artist alive”, Jeanne Paquin was the first designer to promote her sleek couture in public spaces by sending her mannequins to where the best-dressed Parisian gathered, such as the Opera Garnier or the horse racing in Longchamp or Chantilly. So famous were her designs she opened further boutiques in London, Madrid and Buenos Aires and a fourrier on New York City’s 5th Avenue, the first couturiére to do so.
Her contribution to the world of couture was embodied at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris where she designed the entire fashion pavilon (Le Palais des fils, tissus et vêtements, on the Champ-de-Mars) and the costume worn by the 15 feet tall sculpture of La Parisienne. The pavillon, Le Palais de la Mode, included wax displays of Empress Theodora, Marie Antoinette, and other historical figures and large scenes in glass cases showing mannequins in lavish settings wearing the very latest styles by Paquin, Doucet, and others.
Image from WikiCommons
Jeanne Paquin was the first female couturière to be awarded the Légion d’Honneur for her contribution to French fashion. She died in 1936 and while her fashion house continued without her for several years, it finally closed in 1956.
Callot sœurs
On a small street in Paris in 1895, four sisters Marie, Marthe, Régina, and Joséphine (died in 1897, possibly by suicide) set up their dressmaking business where they fashioned shirtwaists and lingerie with antique lace and ribbons. Their father was an artist and their mother from a long line of lacemakers, so the three young women already had an eye for artistry and design. By 1914 their couture house had grown enough that they moved into a new and grander boutique on Avenue Matignon, close to the home of the French President, the Palace Elysée.
The Callot sisters were known and adored for their use of colour, decoration and exotic design. Their clothing was never simple. The orientalism of the 1910s was espoused in dresses of embroidered satin or velvet with paisley medallions and chinese scrolls, or in beaded chemises exquisitely sewn with silken birds or fire-breathing dragons. A 1920s black wool dress would be trimmed with white organdy and belted in green leather stamped in gold; nightgowns of the most diaphanous silk were interwined with bands of golden lace or bunches of silk flowers. Each piece of clothing was custom made and beaded and draped by hand.
Extremely popular in the United States amongst wealthy women who loved the beautifully worked and embroidered designs, in 1916 the magazine Vogue named the sisters ‘The Three Fates’ and declared them ‘foremost among the powers that rule the destinies of a woman’s life and increase the income of France’. In 1900 they were featured at the Paris World Fair.
“But then, is there a vast difference between a Callot dress and one from any ordinary shop?” I asked Albertine.
“Why, an enormous difference, my dear,” she replied … What costs three hundred francs in an ordinary shop costs two thousand there. But there is no comparison; they look the same only to people who know nothing about it.
A la recherche du temps perdu, Marcel Proust
Several years ago an a wonderful discovery was made in a forgotten storeroom in an Italian villa near Florence- inside twelve vintage Louis Vuitton steamer trunks were twenty-one original Callot Soeurs gowns, previously owned by American socialite Hortense Mitchell Acton. She and her husband had been arrested by the Fascists in 1940 after which the house was looted of treasures, but in the half a century since, the dresses had remained hidden and were in a pristine condition.
The last of the Callot sisters, Marie, died in 1927 and the House of Callot Soeurs was eventually sold in 1937.
Boué Sœurs (1899 to 1957)
Sisters Madame Sylvie Montegut and Baronne Jeanne d’Etreillis founded this late century fashion house under their maiden name, Boué. Their designs were influenced by their love of all things feminine; lace, delicate colours, silk ribbon rosettes. In the sisters’ opinion, these roses were “the signature of Boué”.
Jacket of gathered machine-embroidered net. Above waist length with a fluted lace-trimmed hem, mounted over chiffon, and gathered to a yoke. The short sleeves are similarly treated, but gathered chiffon shows on the underside. The yoke is trimmed with applied white acorn and oak leaf crocket-type motifs and undulating rows of knotted braid. There is an applied collar of white silk to which is stitched a design of gilt braid and pink ribbon, and gilt wire balls. A round button, trimmed with glass beads, gilt braid and a pink ribbon rosette is stitched at each side of the neck. A similar button is stitched at the bottom. The front is further trimmed with central tassels in gilt balls and crystal beads. When the garment is closed, frills, continuations of the lacing, but lace edged, show at the centre front.
Jacket, House of Boué Sœurs, 1905. Image and description from V&A Collection
Whilst their maison de couture never achieved the reputation of a major house, they had a faithful following.
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