Paris A Brief History Of Parisian Fashion

Paris has been at the vanguard of fashion since the Romans got tunic-making tips from the Gauls. Things really took off during the 17th century, when the costumes of royals and aristocrats inspired the envy of both the wealthy and the lowly, who eventually got so fed up with those 5ft. high powdered wigs and 10ft. wide bejeweled skirts that they started a Revolution. Post-Revolutionary Empire style, perhaps aware of the decadent fastidiousness of the previous century, was all about a “simple” Neoclassical ideal. Fashion as we know it today came into being in the 1800s, when the first department stores were built . The bourgeoisie became consummate consumers; artists like Edouard Manet and writers like Charles Baudelaire began to represent fashion as a harbinger of modernity—a unique expression of “the moral and aesthetic feeling” of the era. Soon thereafter, the couturier (designer; see Couture Culture) was born.

The first modern couturier was Charles Frederick Worth, whose House of Worth opened in Paris in 1858. Worth invented the fashion show, the designer-as-celebrity (clothing-makers had previously been considered lowly artisans), and the fashion label as a status symbol. In the early 20th century, designers like Madeliene Vionnet and Paul Poiret, influenced by Art Nouveau and Orientalist trends, “liberated” women from corsets and heavy petticoats, designing whimsical shapes and flowing bias-cut dresses. In the 1920s, the iconic Coco Chanel revolutionized women’s dress with her boyish elegance, insistence on comfort, legendary suits, and invention of the “little black dress.” Meanwhile, the designs of innovators like Elsa Schiaparelli echoed radical art movements like Surrealism and Cubism ( Salvador Dalí designed the fabric for some of her dresses). During WWII, strict regulations were enforced on fabric and design, and patriotic self-denial came into fashion. But in 1947, Christian Dior aroused shock, anger, and delight with the cinched waists and outlandishly full skirts of his New Look, re-establishing Paris as the center of the fashion world and, once again, reinventing the way the female form was idealized. In the 1960s, André Courrèges and Paco Rabanne moved fashion in fantastically futuristic directions, employing bold shapes and radical new materials. Yves Saint Laurent dominated Parisian fashion throughout the second half of the 20th century with his embrace of androgynous style and Left Bank beatnik chic.

Today, designers like Jean-Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix display their creations in extravagant bi-annual spectacles, the Paris fashion shows. Fashion continues to exist at the crossroads of art and consumerism; to reinvent the past and imagine the future; and to shape—and be shaped by—the way we perceive our desires, bodies, and eras. And Paris is where it all goes down.