In the nineteenth century, fashion was a game of social status reserved for high-society women and theatre stars of independent means. Trends trickled down, but not very far and not very fast: the sheer cost of clothing ensured that. Women’s fashion was spectacularly restrictive. The corset squeezed the rib cage while the crinoline and full-length hemlines restricted movement. Individuality was frowned upon: the role of a woman in genteel society was essentially conformist, focusing on children and social life.
Until the emergence of Englishman Charles Frederick Worth in Paris in the late 1850s, a customer would buy fabrics separately, and then take them to a dressmaker to be made up. Worth brought these activities together and created the model for the fashion house that dominated throughout the twentieth century and into the early twenty-first. Although his dresses reflected the restrictive ethos of their time, his achievement as the founder of the modern fashion system remains undiminished.
The late nineteenth century saw the first stirrings of women’s emancipation. British tailors Charles Poynter at Redfern and Henry Creed, who both flourished with shops in Paris, had introduced tailoring to women’s fashion. But Pre-Raphaelite artists and the Aesthetes promoted a new kind of dressing, drawing on ancient Greek models that followed the natural silhouette. Most of their ideas remained theoretical, but the guidelines were in place for change. Women were also beginning to find a place for themselves in the business of fashion. In the 1890s, Jeanne Paquin founded her own couture house, while Marie Callot Gerber and her sisters established the house of Callot Soeurs.
By 1900 and the dawn of the twentieth century, the core fashion message from Paris showed few signs of moving forward. The S silhouette, which thrust a woman’s breasts forward and her derrière backward, was the fashionable look of the period. Mariano Fortuny’s loose Delphos Dress, created in 1907 and worn by the dancer Isadora Duncan, hinted at a radical shift in direction, but it was Paul Poiret who had the biggest impact, promoting a natural silhouette, loosening the constricted waist and doing away with the more severe versions of the corset. His emergence came as the brassiere received a mention in Vogue for the first time.
Both Worth and Poiret believed their expertise gave them the right—and duty—to dictate to their customers. A woman must be guided in her desire for a new fashion, they thought. But couturières such as Jeanne Paquin and Callot Soeurs were more inclined to listen to their customers. The first decade of the twentieth century concluded with Paul Poiret at his peak, inspired by orientalism, which drew influence from all points east.