October 13, 2018 • 30 mins
Today we revisit an episode from 2014. Before Charles Worth, the idea of ready made clothes for purchase didn't really exist. Neither did the idea of a design house that showed seasonal collections. This one man's vision invented the fashion industry as we know it today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. Today is the birthday of Charles Frederick Worth,
who was the founder of the House of Worth. So
we're going back to our episode on his life and
the birth of VAT culture and if you like fashion history,
Just in case you have missed it, there is also
a whole fashion history podcast on our network. It is
called Dressed. It is hosted by April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary,
(00:24):
who are fashion historians and it is a delight so enjoy.
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm trace Phoebe Wilson. We get
(00:47):
a lot of request to do more fashion related podcasts, uh,
and specifically the one that we're going to talk about today.
So this person set in motion really the very concept
of a design house and established many of the practices
that are standard business for designers today. I won't go
on a lot in the introduction because it all comes
out in the story. Uh. This is a man who
(01:09):
ran the Paris fashion scene in the late eighteen hundreds.
He really was sort of bizarre fashion for France at
that point. He's featured all over our pinter's board. He is,
in fact Charles Worth. Before we start, could I just
say that I'm glad you're around to field all these
requests about fashion history, because if it were me, I
would be like, once upon a time there was a
(01:31):
garment and it went on people's bodies, which strikes me
as hilarious because the first time I met you, you
were in a costume. So in my head, you're like
a fashion nut like me. But the costume things I
can handle better than like the fashion things you know.
To me, they're all tied up together to get onto
(01:52):
the subject. Charles Frederick Worth was born October eight to
William and Mary Anne Worth and Link in Sure, England.
The Worth family at that point was really well off.
William was one of a long line of attorneys, but
things didn't quite stay so rosy. Early on in Charles's
(02:12):
life the tide of affluents really shifted. His father was
an alcoholic and basically squandered the family fortune, and when
Charles was around eleven, he lost everything to the combination
of drinking gambling, and as a consequence, both Marianne and
young Charles suddenly kind of were put in the position
to have to support the family while his mother took
(02:34):
on cleaning jobs to make ends meet. Charles, who was
just twelve, became a printer's apprentice. Princing didn't really suit him, though,
and after a year in that trade, he went to
work as a bookkeeper for Swan and Edgar, which was
a textile firm in London. He later shifted to the
silk merchant trade, working for Louis and Allenby, and he
(02:54):
stayed with him until eighteen forty five, when he was
twenty years old. And the entire time that Worth was
working on the business side of the fabric industry, you know,
doing bookkeeping and administrative tasks, he was taking in a
lot more than the bookkeeping. He was watching dressmakers and
their fashionable clients select fabrics and choose designs, and he
(03:16):
was learning as much as he could about textiles and
the various qualities that separated luxury fabrics from more utility weaves.
He went to art galleries and really vociferously studied the
fashions of eras as represented through art, and he basically
observed the entire world of contemporary fashion that was playing
(03:36):
out in these fashions in these textile houses that he
was working in. By eight forty five, he felt like
he was ready to move out of the records office
and into the actual world of fashion, so he left
his job at Louis and Allenby and moved to Paris.
His first job in France, as a sales clerk at
Gagelon and Opeg, was not only his first real step
(03:57):
into the fashion world, but it also proved to be
a really personal turning point as well. It was there
at the fabric and accessories shop that he would meet
Marie Vernet, who sometimes modeled the shops goods, and Charles
and Marie fell in love. They got married in eighteen
fifty one, and she was still modeling accessories for the
luxury shop at that point. After their marriage and Charles
(04:22):
kind of decided to put all of those years of
self directed study to work, so he started to design
and stitch gowns for her to wear while she was
modeling the accessories, like the high end shawls and leases
that the shop provided. This got the attention of several
of Casalon's customers who would ask about Marie's lovely garments.
(04:43):
Worth saw a potential market and started to pitch an
idea to his bosses he would make gowns to sell
alongside the accessories that the shop was already well known for.
In Worth's plan, the shop would provide the raw materials
and he would do all the work. Okay, So for context,
that may not sound particularly groundbreaking in the least to you,
(05:04):
our listeners, but prior to this, there was really no
such thing as walking into a store and purchasing a
ready made garment. So the idea of having a dress, look,
this dress is done, would you like to buy it?
Completely alien. Everything was made to order at that point,
so the idea of marketing a finished gown was frankly radical.
(05:25):
It just no one had ever done it, and no
one at that point even really thought it could be done.
So this was before there was like uniformity of sizes.
You couldn't walk in and say, hey, I'm a size
eight or ten or twelve, what do you have? It
was more like, here are my measurements, make my outfit? Well?
And there's also little uniformity of sizes now right, well,
(05:49):
but there's more than they're used to be sure um,
And prior to vanity sizing it was much more uniform
but Unfortunately, this grand idea of Worth was not met
with enthusiasm by G and OPG. But buoyed by the
fact that his dresses were quickly becoming the talk of
fashionable circles, Worth eventually partnered with a Swedish man he
(06:12):
met through his work. His name was Otto Beaubert was
after a decade of working for the accessory shop that
Worth set up shop with his new partner and a
few dozen staff members. So the business duo opened Worth
in Beaubert in Rude la Pay in the late eighteen fifties.
And the start of words shop wasn't really an instant
(06:33):
success you may have anticipated, like he's still groundbreaking and
people already are talking about him. It didn't really take
off gangbusters like they had hoped. He had customers, but
it just was not the blockbuster that he and Boubert
had envisioned. He knew he was going to have to
reach out to prominent and stylish people to get them
interested in his clothes and build his reputation. So nowadays,
(06:56):
for example, asking a celebrity who they're wearing is de
rigor on red carpet. But this was another concept that's
pretty much entirely worth doing. No one really talked about
designers like they would certainly share, oh I have a
great dressmaker you could use. But it wasn't like with
that level of um, you know, cashet attached to it
where they would be like, oh, this is the one
(07:17):
rose Berta a little bit and we'll talk about her
again a little bit later, but just not not the
thing to talk about your designer. While out for a
walk with Marie one evening, Charles noticed the Princess Pauline
de Metternich of Vienna, and that was the wife of
the Austrian ambassador to Paris. She was traveling in her
carriage on her way to be presented at court. He
(07:40):
was impressed with her demeanor and how she carried herself,
and he thought she could be the perfect ambassador for
him among the royals and the wealthy, and within a
few weeks a meeting had been arranged, so he sent
Marie to present the princess with a book of fashion
sketches that her husband had done, and at that meeting,
the princess ordered two gowns. She paid only three hundred
(08:02):
francs for each, which was certainly not cheap, but for
someone of her rank it really was not a terrible expense,
and she also promised to wear one of them to
an upcoming ball, so she kind of was in on
the plan from the beginning of like, hey, it would
be great if you would wear our clothes and show
them to your friends. The dress was white tool with
(08:23):
silver threading, and it was embellished with daisies and diamonds,
which just sounds happy and sparkly to me. The ball
was hosted by Napoleon the third Empress Eugenie, and Eugenie
was a striking woman and arrived at the ball also
in white Tool, and she had this garland of fresh
flowers in her hair and a lavish spread of diamonds
(08:44):
everywhere else. And while by all accounts the Empress was
certainly the belle of the ball, at anything you read
about her, and particularly about that evening, they talked about
just how incredibly luminous and beautiful she looked. Many people
regarded her as one of the most beautiful women of
the day. But she did indeed notice the gown that
Princess Metternick was wearing, and she actually inquired about it,
(09:05):
and when the princess mentioned that it was made by
an englishman named Worth. Uh, and they discussed it briefly.
The Empress then requested that he come to visit her
almost immediately the next day. And so with that, Charles
Worth's career sort of took off at a really dizzying speed.
But before we get to that, do you want to
take a word from a sponsor. Yes, To get back
(09:36):
to Charles Worth, he really tended to buck social conventions
and to dress in a much more casual and eclectic
way than you might expect for a gentleman of that time.
And this was true when he went to Tuelry to
meet the Empress. You would expect a man to be
or anyone really informal dress on such an occasion, but
(09:56):
he had on casual clothing and a beret this uh.
And we'll talk about it a little bit more later,
but he really seems like he was maybe the mold
maker for the bohemian artiste designer that has really followed
been followed by numerous people, uh since. And I have
to wonder if they're aping Worth, whether they consciously or
(10:19):
unconsciously are doing so. You know, anytime you sort of
think of, um, those people that sort of carry themselves
with a little bit of pretense and pretense and their artistes.
I think Worth may have been the genesis point of
a lot of the stereotypes that we have come up
with around artists. But his timing, more importantly, when he
(10:42):
met Princess Metternick, had really been impeccable because he had
managed to get his foot in the door with the
royal class at the same time that Empress Eugenie, with
Napoleon the Third's urging, was really looking to up her
game when it came to style and fashion. She wasn't
unfashioned a bowl and she had style, but she really
(11:03):
was tended to be a little bit more simple than
than one would anticipate and what the people tended to
desire in the woman who sat at the the highest
position in France. So it was really in her best
interest to cultivate a more stylish image. And so while
she had a natural style and she was by all
accounts very elegant, she really needed someone to shape her
(11:24):
wardrobe worthy into one that would be worthy of her station.
And that is at the point where Charles Worth entered
her dressing room. During that first meeting, which was held
in her dressing room, she ordered one evening dress from
the designer, and that doesn't sound like a lot, but
it would work out to be the first of many.
Oh yes, he ended up basically providing all of her
(11:47):
clothes as time went on, and in addition to the
wonderful timing of meeting Eugenie, just as she was plotting
a wardrobe overhaul, Worth was also inventing the idea of
a fashion designer. At the same time that court functions
really required multiple wardrobe changes each day, and wearing the
same dress twice was something of an image suicide. There are,
(12:09):
in fact stories of Eugenie withdrawing invitations to people after
they had appeared in court and had not been stylish enough.
So she then was like, hey, you know how I
said come back next week. I didn't mean that I'm
gonna withdraw that, and she was usually quite direct and said, like,
you know, due to clothing that was unbecoming. So basically
at this point, as he's getting there, Eugenie wants an overhaul,
(12:31):
and for everyone else kind of in the higher strata
of social structure, if you wanted to hang out at
French Court, you really better have a closet full of
incredibly sumptuous finery, and once people knew that he was
dressing the Empress, Worth was in demand constantly morning and night.
His popularity grew so quickly that the street outside of
(12:53):
his shop was said to be constantly clogged with carriages.
The shop itself was crowded with wealth the patrons who
were there to socialize and to be seen in the
shop as well as to actually order gowns. And for
his part, Worth really basked in the spotlight. Uh. He
would entertain high profile customers, you know, in a group.
(13:16):
He would sit there and chat with all the ladies
and he would he had this habit that to me
sounds so horrible, but I can see where it would
appeal to the society. He would call one or another woman,
like whoever he picked at any given moment, uh, in
their little social circle forward, and then he would critique
their ensemble head to two, like it's like what not
(13:39):
to weare? Yeah, I mean I presume if you were
going to visit him, you probably already tried to be
turned out and look as as good as you possibly could.
But that sounds very scary to me. Uh. And sometimes
he would be very um positive and say, oh you
look beautiful. You know, this is all working. But he
would also critique people and tell them like, your outfit
(14:01):
is horrible and here's what needs fixing. And while you
might think this kind of behavior could potentially drive customers away,
it did not. It kind of upped his appeal. Uh.
He ended up designing not only for Empress Eugenie, but
even the likes of Queen Victoria and Empress Elizabeth. He
designed Elizabeth's coronation gown when she became Queen of Hungary,
and so a high end gown from the House of
(14:23):
Worth could run as much as ten thousand dollars, although
there were customers and clients that did not spend that much.
Some would spend that much in a year, but some
would drop that much at a pop. And that's a
lot when you consider mid eighteen hundreds. Uh. Also part
of his sort of uh mystique or his cultivated personality,
Empress Eugenie would sometimes butt heads with him about how
(14:47):
a garment or a gown should be executed or what
cloth should be used, but she basically always caved into
what he wanted to do, which is saying a great
deal about his power. Uh. You know, he basically is
with the most powerful woman in the country and going no, no, no,
you're wrong. Just let me do my thing, and she
would go okay. She ended up nicknaming him the Tyrant
(15:08):
of Fashion. By eighteen sixty four, so five years into
his creative relationship with the Empress, Worth had become the
official corturier of the French court, and it's estimated that
his fashion house was producing between ten thousand and eleven
thousand pieces a year in gowns and outerwear to keep
the finest ladies in France outfitted in the latest styles.
(15:32):
So with that level of output, obviously he was not
doing all the stitching himself. Uh. He maintained the integrity
of his brand though by just being a really conscientious manager.
He held his garments to the highest quality standards. He
hired only the best seamstresses and dressmakers to execute his designs.
One of the sort of signatures of his clothing was
(15:54):
that the interiors of the garment garments had to be
finished so well that they would rival the outside in
beauty like. There was no ugly interiors, everything was beautiful
inside and out. He also used only the finest fabrics.
His textile choices could really make a year for a weaver.
Leon had been known as a hub of really x
(16:16):
was exquisite silk and worth take advantage of having such
incredible fabrics so close by, and his adopted home country
textile mills would send worth samples and the hopes of
getting a lucrative order out of it. Yeah, he really
you know, his word was gold in terms of the
textile world. Like if he endorsed a particular weaver, whether
(16:39):
or not he did a huge order for that year,
they basically were going to do great for that year. Uh.
And as his fame and prestige grew, worth, as you
may have surmised from our anecdote a few moments ago
about how he would critiquely these outfits in front of
their peers, could sometimes be a bit of a pill um.
His mannerisms would sometimes come off as affected. He kind
(17:00):
of really did cultivate this personality of being a colectic,
being a little bit nutty. He would often wear really
colorful robes, and he always wore his signature black beret
or a black skull cap. And at one point he
decided he was going to design his own coat of arms,
which he did and had it worked into the gates
(17:20):
of his home. Uh and in some ways he became
almost as famous for his ego as for his designing talent.
But you know, none of that ever seemed to distract
people from thinking his work was amazing. And so things
were going swimmingly for him, and he was the darling
of the French court until circumstances intervened. She will talk
(17:42):
about after another brief break. So back to Charles Worth.
During the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy, the House
of Worth, like many high end businesses in France, closed temporarily.
Charles's greatest benefactor, of the Empress Eugenie, was forced into exile,
(18:06):
and the Rue Lapey home of the House of Worth
actually became a hospital for injured French soldiers during the fighting.
But once the conflict had ended and the dust had settled,
the House of Earth reopened, surprisingly to even greater success.
Although Otto Boubat was no longer part of the business,
he had been uneasy about setting the shop up again
(18:28):
after their first Their first venture was so abruptly cut
short due to the political climate, so Worth bought bought
out his share of the empire for one point five
million francs, and while most of his French clients were gone,
he still had plenty of wealthy fans from the United
States and Europe who were happy to order gowns. So
(18:49):
business was really booming even though the climate was so
much different, So much so that the tiny shop that
started with just fifty employees wound up swelling to a
staff of more in a thousand. Yeah. He I mean,
we we've heard it so many times before when we've
talked about design houses or you know, people that uh
(19:09):
make their living in sort of extravagant arenas, that something
will happen like a war and they never quite recover.
But in fact he's sort of the exception that proves
the rule. He did great after the war, However, as
his career stretched into the eighteen eighties, his cachet started
to ebb. When the groundbreaking gownmaker died in eighty five,
(19:31):
he had really already been eclipsed by the next generation
of designers, including Pekka and Say. Of course, there would
have been no next generation of designers if Worth had
not paved the way. When Charles Worth died, his son's
Gaston and Jean Philippe inherited the family business, and that
worked out really well for a lot of years. Gaston
handled the business side of things while Jean Philipe did
(19:54):
all the designing. Through the years, other family members also
worked at the fashion house that was started by Charles Worth. However,
eventually there was the anti corset movement and a trend
towards simpler lines, and those were led by previous podcast
subject Paul poor Ay. As that all Tooke called the
House of Worth found its business slowly dwindling year by year,
(20:17):
and it finally closed up shop for the last time
in nineteen fifty six. But I think to really understand
the importance of Charlesworth's stature in fashion history, we have
to look at some of the genuinely revolutionary ideas that
he introduced, and we'll start with one that did not
stick around, but it completely defined Victorian fashion for a
(20:39):
lot of people, and that is the bustle. So over
time he evolved the crinoline, so the wide bottomed dresses
into a partial crinoline which stuck out behind a lady,
so it gave her kind of a large rump shape
and projected beyond that while the front of her silhouette
remained narrow for the most part, and when people today
think of Victorian fashion, it is usually the bustle that
(21:02):
springs to mind in the silhouettes like they'll go of
course it and then bustle is usually second. And that's
all because of worth. And just for the record, I
love bustle gowns. I love, love, love bustle gowns. I
have several, you know at the at the top of
the episode where I was like, it's a garment and
it goes on your body. I also love bustles, uh,
(21:23):
and part of that is because of a costume class
that I took that was all about draping bustles and
different shapes that you could get with different bustle drapes.
I love them. I know to the modern eye people
that are not into historical fashion, they look ridiculous. I
just love that silhouette. I can't even describe why it
looks beautiful. It's super fun to wear well, and to
(21:45):
be fair, there were people who thought it was ridiculous
that at the time. I remember editorial cartoons that were
like a lady with a snail attached to the back
of her body. So other dressmakers were often dubious of
new technology, but we're really embraced the sewing machine as
a way to expedite production without sacrificing quality. And he
(22:07):
also used manufactured trims on his garments before people widely
accepted that either. Yeah, he was just ahead of his
time in all in his visions for fashion and in
another completely new approach to fashion. Remember, prior to this time,
all pretty much all garments were made to order specifically
(22:28):
for the wearer. But Worth would often sell his original
garment that he had made to foreign buyers, and he
would also sell rights to copy and distribute it as
you know, the recreated style. So basically he was selling
the rights to make copies. So design licensing was born
with him, and on a related business model, he would
(22:49):
actually make ready to wear gowns to sell to department
stores abroad. Department stores are a completely new concept, so
you know, the idea that he was like, yeah, I'll
get in on this and willing to take this risk
and sell to them was really huge. So despite being
the designer of really lavish gowns for the elite ladies
(23:09):
of France, Charles Worth was also the first designer to
really turn a practical eye to the length of ladies
gowns during this time, the hymns of Victorian gowns were
just notorious for dragging on the ground and getting completely
filthy anytime there was dampness or mud, and Worth thought
this was really a pity, so he shortened the hymns
(23:30):
of day gowns to create what came to be known
as the walking skirt. And these carts really weren't all
that short, but it was enough to stay lifted off
the ground while still offering kind of a head to
toe appearance. And just in case we were not entirely clear,
those were like the day gowns for evening, where it
still was full length, but forgetting about town and running
(23:50):
your errands and going calling, you could actually, you know,
stroll about without getting too mucky. Uh. And the House
of Worth and Bober is widely considered to have been
the first true fashion house, and it straddled the line
between being open to the public and also being very exclusive.
So upon entry, customers were greeted by gentlemen and fine attire.
(24:12):
The shop was decorated really sumptuously and beautifully, and then
these customers would be brought to one of the shops
salons to see either a presentation of available gowns. They
could also go to a different salon de view fabric
samples and design sketches, or they could go in this
room to try on outfits that had um specialty lighting
(24:33):
designed for it. It was slightly dimmed and it was
meant to mimic the lighting that they would most commonly
find at like a ball or another formal event. Before Worth,
no one had ever thought to create a whole series
of garments to then present together as a fashion show.
So the concept of a collection was another one of
his innovations. Now there's this whole industry and culture around
(24:55):
seasonal showings of different designers, and that really started with
Charles Worth. Yeah, when you if anybody watched this project
Runway and they all talk about going to fashion Week,
and like, fashion Week would not have existed in the
form it was today had Charles Worth not been like,
here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put together a
bunch of beautiful outfits. I'm gonna put on a little
show and then people can order them. That's how it
(25:17):
still works today, and it's all because he did this.
So because he was the first designer to offer a
collection and market ready to wear gowns and produce a
large volume of garments each year. It's also probably no
surprise that he is the one that came up with
the idea of standardized patterns. Uh. And this still holds
today to some degree. Worth in his dressmakers and drapers
(25:39):
developed a series of pattern slopers. So to oversimplify what
a sloper is, it's like a basic block pattern that
can then be modified. And these pattern pieces would work
interchangeably with one another, so any sleeve or caller in
the collection could be used on any bodice in the collection,
and it really just streamlined the whole process of manufacturing
(26:01):
these garments but still maintaining a really high level of quality.
So the idea of adding a signature to a garment
the way a painter would sign a piece of art
was really unheard of until Charles Worth. You started doing
exactly that with labels, and prior to him, the idea
of telling someone who you were wearing would have been
really odd. Would have been sort of like telling someone
(26:22):
the name of your maid if they said that your
home looked very nice. Uh. But the label became sort
of a status symbol and Some of this, of course,
is also tied to industrialization. So to make a comparison
to our Marie Antoinette episode in rose Berta uh ladies,
in Marie Antoinette Era would never have said, oh, I'm
(26:44):
wearing rose Bertin in quite the same way that someone
would say, oh, I'm wearing a Worth. But part of
that was due to the fact that, you know, if
rose bertem made or embellished address for someone, everyone already
knew it. She was sort of so um able to
be really choosy in her clients. You know, she really
(27:04):
only serviced people of the French court. Worth certainly serviced
the French court, but he also, like we said, was
open to the public, so uh. And he was also
working in a time when the garment industry was diversifying
that there were more choices for consumers. Industrialization was allowing
a lot more garment houses to open up that weren't
(27:26):
necessarily design houses but just produced clothing. And also because
he licensed things, there were also copycats that were not
licensed that we're starting to crop up. So wearing an
original Worth did indeed have clout. In eighteen sixty eight,
Charles Worth established the official classification of oad couture, and
to be able to claim status as an old coat
(27:47):
your house a designer had to be recognized as such
by a division of the French Ministry of Industry known
as the Seampa Sindicale. Worth established both the chambre and
the requirements that a design house had to meet in
order to earn this honor. So to qualify, a designer
(28:08):
of hand finished custom made clothing had to employ at
least twenty artisans in a laboratory environment and show a
minimum number of new designs every year. Additionally, there were
strangent technical and creative standards, and the list of designers
allowed to use this label still exists. It's reviewed every year.
Then usually there are only about a dozen houses that
(28:30):
are on the list at any given time. It's a
phrase that's kind of lost a lot of its meaning
in the modern vernacular, but it really represents the absolute
highest level of excellence from both the design and an
execution standpoint for garments. Yeah, it's one of those things
you'll see people talking about couture and mentioning old couture.
(28:55):
It's but it's it's really much more specific than I
think people realize, because again, like you can't say most
designers are ocatour like Jean Paul Gautier is an officially
recognized OCA Tour designer, but most designers are not. Again,
this is a very short list, uh and it really
does represent an extremely high standard. There was a video
(29:18):
and I'll try to find it so we can put
it in the show notes. That is not particularly historical,
but it is a video of of sort of what
goes into a modern ocatour gown, and you see all
of the hours of painstaking labor that really really technically
skilled stitchers and artisans go through to apply embellishment and
make sure every scene is perfect and every scene again
(29:39):
the inside is just as beautiful as the outside. Uh So,
it really is quite a high honor and quite a
level of excellence that's associated with that term. Whereas you
will hear it mentioned on television and film all the time,
and it's not really exactly the correct usage of it.
I mean I used the sloppy usage as well. I'm
not judging anybody, but just clarity. That's the scoop without couture.
(30:08):
Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic.
Since this is out of the archive, if you heard
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are at History podcast at how stuff works dot com,
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(30:29):
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Happy Saturday, everybody. Today is the birthday of Charles Frederick Worth,
who was the founder of the House of Worth. So
we're going back to our episode on his life and
the birth of VAT culture and if you like fashion history,
Just in case you have missed it, there is also
a whole fashion history podcast on our network. It is
called Dressed. It is hosted by April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary,
(00:24):
who are fashion historians and it is a delight so enjoy.
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm trace Phoebe Wilson. We get
(00:47):
a lot of request to do more fashion related podcasts, uh,
and specifically the one that we're going to talk about today.
So this person set in motion really the very concept
of a design house and established many of the practices
that are standard business for designers today. I won't go
on a lot in the introduction because it all comes
out in the story. Uh. This is a man who
(01:09):
ran the Paris fashion scene in the late eighteen hundreds.
He really was sort of bizarre fashion for France at
that point. He's featured all over our pinter's board. He is,
in fact Charles Worth. Before we start, could I just
say that I'm glad you're around to field all these
requests about fashion history, because if it were me, I
would be like, once upon a time there was a
(01:31):
garment and it went on people's bodies, which strikes me
as hilarious because the first time I met you, you
were in a costume. So in my head, you're like
a fashion nut like me. But the costume things I
can handle better than like the fashion things you know.
To me, they're all tied up together to get onto
(01:52):
the subject. Charles Frederick Worth was born October eight to
William and Mary Anne Worth and Link in Sure, England.
The Worth family at that point was really well off.
William was one of a long line of attorneys, but
things didn't quite stay so rosy. Early on in Charles's
(02:12):
life the tide of affluents really shifted. His father was
an alcoholic and basically squandered the family fortune, and when
Charles was around eleven, he lost everything to the combination
of drinking gambling, and as a consequence, both Marianne and
young Charles suddenly kind of were put in the position
to have to support the family while his mother took
(02:34):
on cleaning jobs to make ends meet. Charles, who was
just twelve, became a printer's apprentice. Princing didn't really suit him, though,
and after a year in that trade, he went to
work as a bookkeeper for Swan and Edgar, which was
a textile firm in London. He later shifted to the
silk merchant trade, working for Louis and Allenby, and he
(02:54):
stayed with him until eighteen forty five, when he was
twenty years old. And the entire time that Worth was
working on the business side of the fabric industry, you know,
doing bookkeeping and administrative tasks, he was taking in a
lot more than the bookkeeping. He was watching dressmakers and
their fashionable clients select fabrics and choose designs, and he
(03:16):
was learning as much as he could about textiles and
the various qualities that separated luxury fabrics from more utility weaves.
He went to art galleries and really vociferously studied the
fashions of eras as represented through art, and he basically
observed the entire world of contemporary fashion that was playing
(03:36):
out in these fashions in these textile houses that he
was working in. By eight forty five, he felt like
he was ready to move out of the records office
and into the actual world of fashion, so he left
his job at Louis and Allenby and moved to Paris.
His first job in France, as a sales clerk at
Gagelon and Opeg, was not only his first real step
(03:57):
into the fashion world, but it also proved to be
a really personal turning point as well. It was there
at the fabric and accessories shop that he would meet
Marie Vernet, who sometimes modeled the shops goods, and Charles
and Marie fell in love. They got married in eighteen
fifty one, and she was still modeling accessories for the
luxury shop at that point. After their marriage and Charles
(04:22):
kind of decided to put all of those years of
self directed study to work, so he started to design
and stitch gowns for her to wear while she was
modeling the accessories, like the high end shawls and leases
that the shop provided. This got the attention of several
of Casalon's customers who would ask about Marie's lovely garments.
(04:43):
Worth saw a potential market and started to pitch an
idea to his bosses he would make gowns to sell
alongside the accessories that the shop was already well known for.
In Worth's plan, the shop would provide the raw materials
and he would do all the work. Okay, So for context,
that may not sound particularly groundbreaking in the least to you,
(05:04):
our listeners, but prior to this, there was really no
such thing as walking into a store and purchasing a
ready made garment. So the idea of having a dress, look,
this dress is done, would you like to buy it?
Completely alien. Everything was made to order at that point,
so the idea of marketing a finished gown was frankly radical.
(05:25):
It just no one had ever done it, and no
one at that point even really thought it could be done.
So this was before there was like uniformity of sizes.
You couldn't walk in and say, hey, I'm a size
eight or ten or twelve, what do you have? It
was more like, here are my measurements, make my outfit? Well?
And there's also little uniformity of sizes now right, well,
(05:49):
but there's more than they're used to be sure um,
And prior to vanity sizing it was much more uniform
but Unfortunately, this grand idea of Worth was not met
with enthusiasm by G and OPG. But buoyed by the
fact that his dresses were quickly becoming the talk of
fashionable circles, Worth eventually partnered with a Swedish man he
(06:12):
met through his work. His name was Otto Beaubert was
after a decade of working for the accessory shop that
Worth set up shop with his new partner and a
few dozen staff members. So the business duo opened Worth
in Beaubert in Rude la Pay in the late eighteen fifties.
And the start of words shop wasn't really an instant
(06:33):
success you may have anticipated, like he's still groundbreaking and
people already are talking about him. It didn't really take
off gangbusters like they had hoped. He had customers, but
it just was not the blockbuster that he and Boubert
had envisioned. He knew he was going to have to
reach out to prominent and stylish people to get them
interested in his clothes and build his reputation. So nowadays,
(06:56):
for example, asking a celebrity who they're wearing is de
rigor on red carpet. But this was another concept that's
pretty much entirely worth doing. No one really talked about
designers like they would certainly share, oh I have a
great dressmaker you could use. But it wasn't like with
that level of um, you know, cashet attached to it
where they would be like, oh, this is the one
(07:17):
rose Berta a little bit and we'll talk about her
again a little bit later, but just not not the
thing to talk about your designer. While out for a
walk with Marie one evening, Charles noticed the Princess Pauline
de Metternich of Vienna, and that was the wife of
the Austrian ambassador to Paris. She was traveling in her
carriage on her way to be presented at court. He
(07:40):
was impressed with her demeanor and how she carried herself,
and he thought she could be the perfect ambassador for
him among the royals and the wealthy, and within a
few weeks a meeting had been arranged, so he sent
Marie to present the princess with a book of fashion
sketches that her husband had done, and at that meeting,
the princess ordered two gowns. She paid only three hundred
(08:02):
francs for each, which was certainly not cheap, but for
someone of her rank it really was not a terrible expense,
and she also promised to wear one of them to
an upcoming ball, so she kind of was in on
the plan from the beginning of like, hey, it would
be great if you would wear our clothes and show
them to your friends. The dress was white tool with
(08:23):
silver threading, and it was embellished with daisies and diamonds,
which just sounds happy and sparkly to me. The ball
was hosted by Napoleon the third Empress Eugenie, and Eugenie
was a striking woman and arrived at the ball also
in white Tool, and she had this garland of fresh
flowers in her hair and a lavish spread of diamonds
(08:44):
everywhere else. And while by all accounts the Empress was
certainly the belle of the ball, at anything you read
about her, and particularly about that evening, they talked about
just how incredibly luminous and beautiful she looked. Many people
regarded her as one of the most beautiful women of
the day. But she did indeed notice the gown that
Princess Metternick was wearing, and she actually inquired about it,
(09:05):
and when the princess mentioned that it was made by
an englishman named Worth. Uh, and they discussed it briefly.
The Empress then requested that he come to visit her
almost immediately the next day. And so with that, Charles
Worth's career sort of took off at a really dizzying speed.
But before we get to that, do you want to
take a word from a sponsor. Yes, To get back
(09:36):
to Charles Worth, he really tended to buck social conventions
and to dress in a much more casual and eclectic
way than you might expect for a gentleman of that time.
And this was true when he went to Tuelry to
meet the Empress. You would expect a man to be
or anyone really informal dress on such an occasion, but
(09:56):
he had on casual clothing and a beret this uh.
And we'll talk about it a little bit more later,
but he really seems like he was maybe the mold
maker for the bohemian artiste designer that has really followed
been followed by numerous people, uh since. And I have
to wonder if they're aping Worth, whether they consciously or
(10:19):
unconsciously are doing so. You know, anytime you sort of
think of, um, those people that sort of carry themselves
with a little bit of pretense and pretense and their artistes.
I think Worth may have been the genesis point of
a lot of the stereotypes that we have come up
with around artists. But his timing, more importantly, when he
(10:42):
met Princess Metternick, had really been impeccable because he had
managed to get his foot in the door with the
royal class at the same time that Empress Eugenie, with
Napoleon the Third's urging, was really looking to up her
game when it came to style and fashion. She wasn't
unfashioned a bowl and she had style, but she really
(11:03):
was tended to be a little bit more simple than
than one would anticipate and what the people tended to
desire in the woman who sat at the the highest
position in France. So it was really in her best
interest to cultivate a more stylish image. And so while
she had a natural style and she was by all
accounts very elegant, she really needed someone to shape her
(11:24):
wardrobe worthy into one that would be worthy of her station.
And that is at the point where Charles Worth entered
her dressing room. During that first meeting, which was held
in her dressing room, she ordered one evening dress from
the designer, and that doesn't sound like a lot, but
it would work out to be the first of many.
Oh yes, he ended up basically providing all of her
(11:47):
clothes as time went on, and in addition to the
wonderful timing of meeting Eugenie, just as she was plotting
a wardrobe overhaul, Worth was also inventing the idea of
a fashion designer. At the same time that court functions
really required multiple wardrobe changes each day, and wearing the
same dress twice was something of an image suicide. There are,
(12:09):
in fact stories of Eugenie withdrawing invitations to people after
they had appeared in court and had not been stylish enough.
So she then was like, hey, you know how I
said come back next week. I didn't mean that I'm
gonna withdraw that, and she was usually quite direct and said, like,
you know, due to clothing that was unbecoming. So basically
at this point, as he's getting there, Eugenie wants an overhaul,
(12:31):
and for everyone else kind of in the higher strata
of social structure, if you wanted to hang out at
French Court, you really better have a closet full of
incredibly sumptuous finery, and once people knew that he was
dressing the Empress, Worth was in demand constantly morning and night.
His popularity grew so quickly that the street outside of
(12:53):
his shop was said to be constantly clogged with carriages.
The shop itself was crowded with wealth the patrons who
were there to socialize and to be seen in the
shop as well as to actually order gowns. And for
his part, Worth really basked in the spotlight. Uh. He
would entertain high profile customers, you know, in a group.
(13:16):
He would sit there and chat with all the ladies
and he would he had this habit that to me
sounds so horrible, but I can see where it would
appeal to the society. He would call one or another woman,
like whoever he picked at any given moment, uh, in
their little social circle forward, and then he would critique
their ensemble head to two, like it's like what not
(13:39):
to weare? Yeah, I mean I presume if you were
going to visit him, you probably already tried to be
turned out and look as as good as you possibly could.
But that sounds very scary to me. Uh. And sometimes
he would be very um positive and say, oh you
look beautiful. You know, this is all working. But he
would also critique people and tell them like, your outfit
(14:01):
is horrible and here's what needs fixing. And while you
might think this kind of behavior could potentially drive customers away,
it did not. It kind of upped his appeal. Uh.
He ended up designing not only for Empress Eugenie, but
even the likes of Queen Victoria and Empress Elizabeth. He
designed Elizabeth's coronation gown when she became Queen of Hungary,
and so a high end gown from the House of
(14:23):
Worth could run as much as ten thousand dollars, although
there were customers and clients that did not spend that much.
Some would spend that much in a year, but some
would drop that much at a pop. And that's a
lot when you consider mid eighteen hundreds. Uh. Also part
of his sort of uh mystique or his cultivated personality,
Empress Eugenie would sometimes butt heads with him about how
(14:47):
a garment or a gown should be executed or what
cloth should be used, but she basically always caved into
what he wanted to do, which is saying a great
deal about his power. Uh. You know, he basically is
with the most powerful woman in the country and going no, no, no,
you're wrong. Just let me do my thing, and she
would go okay. She ended up nicknaming him the Tyrant
(15:08):
of Fashion. By eighteen sixty four, so five years into
his creative relationship with the Empress, Worth had become the
official corturier of the French court, and it's estimated that
his fashion house was producing between ten thousand and eleven
thousand pieces a year in gowns and outerwear to keep
the finest ladies in France outfitted in the latest styles.
(15:32):
So with that level of output, obviously he was not
doing all the stitching himself. Uh. He maintained the integrity
of his brand though by just being a really conscientious manager.
He held his garments to the highest quality standards. He
hired only the best seamstresses and dressmakers to execute his designs.
One of the sort of signatures of his clothing was
(15:54):
that the interiors of the garment garments had to be
finished so well that they would rival the outside in
beauty like. There was no ugly interiors, everything was beautiful
inside and out. He also used only the finest fabrics.
His textile choices could really make a year for a weaver.
Leon had been known as a hub of really x
(16:16):
was exquisite silk and worth take advantage of having such
incredible fabrics so close by, and his adopted home country
textile mills would send worth samples and the hopes of
getting a lucrative order out of it. Yeah, he really
you know, his word was gold in terms of the
textile world. Like if he endorsed a particular weaver, whether
(16:39):
or not he did a huge order for that year,
they basically were going to do great for that year. Uh.
And as his fame and prestige grew, worth, as you
may have surmised from our anecdote a few moments ago
about how he would critiquely these outfits in front of
their peers, could sometimes be a bit of a pill um.
His mannerisms would sometimes come off as affected. He kind
(17:00):
of really did cultivate this personality of being a colectic,
being a little bit nutty. He would often wear really
colorful robes, and he always wore his signature black beret
or a black skull cap. And at one point he
decided he was going to design his own coat of arms,
which he did and had it worked into the gates
(17:20):
of his home. Uh and in some ways he became
almost as famous for his ego as for his designing talent.
But you know, none of that ever seemed to distract
people from thinking his work was amazing. And so things
were going swimmingly for him, and he was the darling
of the French court until circumstances intervened. She will talk
(17:42):
about after another brief break. So back to Charles Worth.
During the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy, the House
of Worth, like many high end businesses in France, closed temporarily.
Charles's greatest benefactor, of the Empress Eugenie, was forced into exile,
(18:06):
and the Rue Lapey home of the House of Worth
actually became a hospital for injured French soldiers during the fighting.
But once the conflict had ended and the dust had settled,
the House of Earth reopened, surprisingly to even greater success.
Although Otto Boubat was no longer part of the business,
he had been uneasy about setting the shop up again
(18:28):
after their first Their first venture was so abruptly cut
short due to the political climate, so Worth bought bought
out his share of the empire for one point five
million francs, and while most of his French clients were gone,
he still had plenty of wealthy fans from the United
States and Europe who were happy to order gowns. So
(18:49):
business was really booming even though the climate was so
much different, So much so that the tiny shop that
started with just fifty employees wound up swelling to a
staff of more in a thousand. Yeah. He I mean,
we we've heard it so many times before when we've
talked about design houses or you know, people that uh
(19:09):
make their living in sort of extravagant arenas, that something
will happen like a war and they never quite recover.
But in fact he's sort of the exception that proves
the rule. He did great after the war, However, as
his career stretched into the eighteen eighties, his cachet started
to ebb. When the groundbreaking gownmaker died in eighty five,
(19:31):
he had really already been eclipsed by the next generation
of designers, including Pekka and Say. Of course, there would
have been no next generation of designers if Worth had
not paved the way. When Charles Worth died, his son's
Gaston and Jean Philippe inherited the family business, and that
worked out really well for a lot of years. Gaston
handled the business side of things while Jean Philipe did
(19:54):
all the designing. Through the years, other family members also
worked at the fashion house that was started by Charles Worth. However,
eventually there was the anti corset movement and a trend
towards simpler lines, and those were led by previous podcast
subject Paul poor Ay. As that all Tooke called the
House of Worth found its business slowly dwindling year by year,
(20:17):
and it finally closed up shop for the last time
in nineteen fifty six. But I think to really understand
the importance of Charlesworth's stature in fashion history, we have
to look at some of the genuinely revolutionary ideas that
he introduced, and we'll start with one that did not
stick around, but it completely defined Victorian fashion for a
(20:39):
lot of people, and that is the bustle. So over
time he evolved the crinoline, so the wide bottomed dresses
into a partial crinoline which stuck out behind a lady,
so it gave her kind of a large rump shape
and projected beyond that while the front of her silhouette
remained narrow for the most part, and when people today
think of Victorian fashion, it is usually the bustle that
(21:02):
springs to mind in the silhouettes like they'll go of
course it and then bustle is usually second. And that's
all because of worth. And just for the record, I
love bustle gowns. I love, love, love bustle gowns. I
have several, you know at the at the top of
the episode where I was like, it's a garment and
it goes on your body. I also love bustles, uh,
(21:23):
and part of that is because of a costume class
that I took that was all about draping bustles and
different shapes that you could get with different bustle drapes.
I love them. I know to the modern eye people
that are not into historical fashion, they look ridiculous. I
just love that silhouette. I can't even describe why it
looks beautiful. It's super fun to wear well, and to
(21:45):
be fair, there were people who thought it was ridiculous
that at the time. I remember editorial cartoons that were
like a lady with a snail attached to the back
of her body. So other dressmakers were often dubious of
new technology, but we're really embraced the sewing machine as
a way to expedite production without sacrificing quality. And he
(22:07):
also used manufactured trims on his garments before people widely
accepted that either. Yeah, he was just ahead of his
time in all in his visions for fashion and in
another completely new approach to fashion. Remember, prior to this time,
all pretty much all garments were made to order specifically
(22:28):
for the wearer. But Worth would often sell his original
garment that he had made to foreign buyers, and he
would also sell rights to copy and distribute it as
you know, the recreated style. So basically he was selling
the rights to make copies. So design licensing was born
with him, and on a related business model, he would
(22:49):
actually make ready to wear gowns to sell to department
stores abroad. Department stores are a completely new concept, so
you know, the idea that he was like, yeah, I'll
get in on this and willing to take this risk
and sell to them was really huge. So despite being
the designer of really lavish gowns for the elite ladies
(23:09):
of France, Charles Worth was also the first designer to
really turn a practical eye to the length of ladies
gowns during this time, the hymns of Victorian gowns were
just notorious for dragging on the ground and getting completely
filthy anytime there was dampness or mud, and Worth thought
this was really a pity, so he shortened the hymns
(23:30):
of day gowns to create what came to be known
as the walking skirt. And these carts really weren't all
that short, but it was enough to stay lifted off
the ground while still offering kind of a head to
toe appearance. And just in case we were not entirely clear,
those were like the day gowns for evening, where it
still was full length, but forgetting about town and running
(23:50):
your errands and going calling, you could actually, you know,
stroll about without getting too mucky. Uh. And the House
of Worth and Bober is widely considered to have been
the first true fashion house, and it straddled the line
between being open to the public and also being very exclusive.
So upon entry, customers were greeted by gentlemen and fine attire.
(24:12):
The shop was decorated really sumptuously and beautifully, and then
these customers would be brought to one of the shops
salons to see either a presentation of available gowns. They
could also go to a different salon de view fabric
samples and design sketches, or they could go in this
room to try on outfits that had um specialty lighting
(24:33):
designed for it. It was slightly dimmed and it was
meant to mimic the lighting that they would most commonly
find at like a ball or another formal event. Before Worth,
no one had ever thought to create a whole series
of garments to then present together as a fashion show.
So the concept of a collection was another one of
his innovations. Now there's this whole industry and culture around
(24:55):
seasonal showings of different designers, and that really started with
Charles Worth. Yeah, when you if anybody watched this project
Runway and they all talk about going to fashion Week,
and like, fashion Week would not have existed in the
form it was today had Charles Worth not been like,
here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put together a
bunch of beautiful outfits. I'm gonna put on a little
show and then people can order them. That's how it
(25:17):
still works today, and it's all because he did this.
So because he was the first designer to offer a
collection and market ready to wear gowns and produce a
large volume of garments each year. It's also probably no
surprise that he is the one that came up with
the idea of standardized patterns. Uh. And this still holds
today to some degree. Worth in his dressmakers and drapers
(25:39):
developed a series of pattern slopers. So to oversimplify what
a sloper is, it's like a basic block pattern that
can then be modified. And these pattern pieces would work
interchangeably with one another, so any sleeve or caller in
the collection could be used on any bodice in the collection,
and it really just streamlined the whole process of manufacturing
(26:01):
these garments but still maintaining a really high level of quality.
So the idea of adding a signature to a garment
the way a painter would sign a piece of art
was really unheard of until Charles Worth. You started doing
exactly that with labels, and prior to him, the idea
of telling someone who you were wearing would have been
really odd. Would have been sort of like telling someone
(26:22):
the name of your maid if they said that your
home looked very nice. Uh. But the label became sort
of a status symbol and Some of this, of course,
is also tied to industrialization. So to make a comparison
to our Marie Antoinette episode in rose Berta uh ladies,
in Marie Antoinette Era would never have said, oh, I'm
(26:44):
wearing rose Bertin in quite the same way that someone
would say, oh, I'm wearing a Worth. But part of
that was due to the fact that, you know, if
rose bertem made or embellished address for someone, everyone already
knew it. She was sort of so um able to
be really choosy in her clients. You know, she really
(27:04):
only serviced people of the French court. Worth certainly serviced
the French court, but he also, like we said, was
open to the public, so uh. And he was also
working in a time when the garment industry was diversifying
that there were more choices for consumers. Industrialization was allowing
a lot more garment houses to open up that weren't
(27:26):
necessarily design houses but just produced clothing. And also because
he licensed things, there were also copycats that were not
licensed that we're starting to crop up. So wearing an
original Worth did indeed have clout. In eighteen sixty eight,
Charles Worth established the official classification of oad couture, and
to be able to claim status as an old coat
(27:47):
your house a designer had to be recognized as such
by a division of the French Ministry of Industry known
as the Seampa Sindicale. Worth established both the chambre and
the requirements that a design house had to meet in
order to earn this honor. So to qualify, a designer
(28:08):
of hand finished custom made clothing had to employ at
least twenty artisans in a laboratory environment and show a
minimum number of new designs every year. Additionally, there were
strangent technical and creative standards, and the list of designers
allowed to use this label still exists. It's reviewed every year.
Then usually there are only about a dozen houses that
(28:30):
are on the list at any given time. It's a
phrase that's kind of lost a lot of its meaning
in the modern vernacular, but it really represents the absolute
highest level of excellence from both the design and an
execution standpoint for garments. Yeah, it's one of those things
you'll see people talking about couture and mentioning old couture.
(28:55):
It's but it's it's really much more specific than I
think people realize, because again, like you can't say most
designers are ocatour like Jean Paul Gautier is an officially
recognized OCA Tour designer, but most designers are not. Again,
this is a very short list, uh and it really
does represent an extremely high standard. There was a video
(29:18):
and I'll try to find it so we can put
it in the show notes. That is not particularly historical,
but it is a video of of sort of what
goes into a modern ocatour gown, and you see all
of the hours of painstaking labor that really really technically
skilled stitchers and artisans go through to apply embellishment and
make sure every scene is perfect and every scene again
(29:39):
the inside is just as beautiful as the outside. Uh So,
it really is quite a high honor and quite a
level of excellence that's associated with that term. Whereas you
will hear it mentioned on television and film all the time,
and it's not really exactly the correct usage of it.
I mean I used the sloppy usage as well. I'm
not judging anybody, but just clarity. That's the scoop without couture.
(30:08):
Thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic.
Since this is out of the archive, if you heard
an email address or a Facebook U r L or
something similar during the course of the show. That may
be obsolete now, so here's our current contact information. We
are at History podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and then we're at Missed in the History. All over
(30:29):
social media that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest,
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and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
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