Révolutions et modes : Histoire du look - Documentaire Mode - Fashion Week - CTB

Strawberry, vertugadine, whale skin, wigs. Since the Renaissance, fashion has been transforming the body with very constricting artifices for nearly three centuries. At the end of the 18th century, powdered wigs, flies and the Versailles label were out of fashion, carried away by a wind of very British modernity and revolutionary torment. In an era that smells of powder, the ancient goddesses of the First Empire will give women a little more lightness of being. When bourgeoisie will rhyme with industry, gentlemen will spend hours in front of their mirror, in the name of the ideal dandy, while knights dream of trousers. Amateurs concerned with historical detail, passionate about the time of crinolines or rodingotes, or in love with the traditions of yore, they will reveal to us the first fashion victims of haute couture, who cross intrepid mechanized Amazons. Beautiful weather, light breeze. In this month of June 1783, crossing the Rhône between Saint-Malo and Plymouth is ideal. French passengers look at the coast from afar. On their side, English travellers feel an urgent need to leave their French clothes to feel more comfortable. Because all the English had to keep their English clothes, at the bottom of their suitcases, during their entire trip to the Kingdom of France. There is a very nice letter from an Englishman who arrives in Paris in 1752 or 1753, something like that, and who writes to one of his friends in England. He tells him what he is doing in Paris, in particular that he is going to order a French dress. And he says, but when I was in this dress, I had the impression of being totally embellished, compared to what he calls my loose frock, which is in the image of our constitution. The garment is still the incarnation, through the fabric, through the cut of the political regime. At this time, everything opposes the subjects of Louis XVI to those of His Majesty George III. On the one hand, in the golden cage of Versailles, there are nobles living in a debauchery of powdered wigs and beautiful lace. On the other hand, we have the aristocrats of a constitutional monarchy, which sits in the Chamber of Communes of London and which, for the rest of the time, is very present on these lands. What is called French dress is court dress. English dress, English clothing, is something else. It is a garment that does not come from the court but comes from the countryside. It is a dress that comes out of the squirrel, in fact. It is the work outfit of the gentleman farmer, of the aristocrat who lives on these lands and who manages these lands, and who dresses like the palfronnier. That's what we called it, the label, finally, this new label is the label of the palfronnier. The English gentleman climbs up the bridge without a wig, dressed in a simple gown and a panties tucked into boots. The lady reappears under the seductive gaze of the French passengers, with a lace dress, all in fluidity. At the end of the 18th century, these are really two lifestyles that are opposed to each other on the sleeve. This doll, which is a fashion magazine to itself, reveals a shirt dress. It is the image of a desire for simplicity and naturalness. It is a trend that is becoming stronger and stronger in the age of time. In Paris, Mirabeau, finally an observer, said, At home, everything is fashion and whims. The tradition of fake asses, wigs and lace is about to be demodified, and this time, it will not be a simple whim. From 1789, those who will sow the revolt are precisely the pantiesless. Having decided to wear only panties, a symbol of the worker, they want to end up with the privileges of the panties and lace wearers. In addition to his famous striped pants, the pantiesless is dressed in a vest or vest, the carmagnol, and a Frisian cap, already worn by the enslaved in the time of Ancient Rome. Freedom, equality, fraternity, the revolutionary era makes the clothing effects of the old regime definitively anachronistic. But for fraternity, it will have to wait. In prisons, during the terror, many are those who await their execution. This is the case of the Italian citizen, who, although she has already cut her superb hair to facilitate the passage of the cut, will avoid the guillotine. A few years later, despite the nightmare they experienced, for the first time in the history of beautiful aristocrats, they decide to keep their hair short. What went so far for a terrible outrage will become a fashion, and with it, the codes of beauty will also make a clean sweep of the past. After the revolution, which abolished the headlights, which of course was entirely linked to the old regime, we will see the desire for a new beauty, inspired by antiquity, inspired by Rome develop. The ladies' toilet is made from fruit water, flower water, tincture water, bathwater, to remove makeup. It is one of the first times that we see that the woman cleans her skin in the evening. It is much softer cosmetics, much softer, less astringent, less vinegary than before. Madame Tallien and a certain Joséphine de Beauharnais, who had linked friendship in prison, were both adepts of red fruit-based baths. Raspberries or strawberries, these secret recipes allow to fill the epidermis with pulses with hydrating and tonifying powers, to make them look more seductive, quite simply. In the dawn of the 19th century, while the Parisian Egeries were relaxing in their baths, the Incroyables turned a clothing anglomania to very particular ends. The Incroyables are often anti-revolutionaries. They hysterize, in a way, this English chic that is settling in, which is linked to the fatigue of the clothing, a certain nonchalance, something frisky. And it's just that in language, since they themselves do not pronounce the R, that's why we call them the Incroyables, and we said, the wonderful ones. They don't pronounce the R, as if they were imitating the English. Huge neck ties around the neck, as if to hide a goitre, deformed panties that give the impression that they have lanky knees, these men use all these incredible tricks to avoid being enrolled in the armies that defend the revolution against the royalties. For these characters, with their out-of-the-ordinary silhouettes, if fighting the English would be a crime of majesty, abstaining from meeting women with the look of a hunting nymph in the district of the Royal Palace would be quite the opposite of their good pleasure. The citizen Basun, in August 1798, testifies to her admiration for dresses with the waist subtly positioned under the chest, and inspired by the aesthetics of ancient Rome. The women's wear in Paris is delicious. The size of the dresses is singularly the smallest woman's. Almost nothing else on the body but gas or crepe. You have to see all this if you want to be a muse, as they are. Never in the history of fashion had feminine clothes been so vaporous and so divinely simple. The fact of being slightly dressed will give a primordial importance to the port of the chalet. He arrived in France through England, which may seem surprising at this time, but he was, of course, inspired by Orient and made from Orient fabric. He was most often in Kashmir. He imagined all the possible colours. There were canary yellows, purple, he could be in several shapes, in lace, in scarf. And it's true that you can find him absolutely everywhere. He is present on all the master's paintings. And he is very, very fashionable. So the art of draping becomes very important. Madame Récamier or Joséphine de Beauharnais, future Empress, become true icons of fashion. Very flirtatious, for their new toilettes, they make their admirers spend enormous sums, for a chalet designed by the great painter Isabelle or a dress seen in the prestigious boutique of Le Roy. After the Emperor's sacrement, the art of this paré will take a much more ostentatious turn and much less clothes. When, in 1807, Maréchal Davout, dignitary of the Empire, received ambassadors from Poland in his palace, fashion became a state affair. The import of chalets was forbidden. The new nobility of the Empire had to buy clothes covered in embroidery or silk velvet, made exclusively in French factories. In this period of economic blockade and arms race with England, it was time to raise its glass to the alliances. Masculine fashion naturally took on a much more martial look, thus standing out from the English elegance considered more distinguished. From the Empire, the military costume will influence the civilian costume. Let's remember the costumes of the Directory, the Incredibles and the Marvelous. Under the Empire, all this is over. We become much stricter, we are no longer close to the body, we must look like a gallant, so we strengthen the shoulders, we adopt what is called the French hat, which we would call a bicorn, and boots are adopted rather than simple loops. So we can see that military fashion is beginning to influence, and it influences more and more until the fall of the Empire, the civilian fashion. For now, it is only a question of enlarging the Empire. After defeating the Prussian army at the Battle of Wagram, the Marshal informs his ally of the Emperor's choice to challenge the Tsar's armies. The Great Army will once again set out on forced marches. Never in history had wars mobilized so many men, and never had military uniforms reached such sophistication. Greniards, artillers, leathermakers or hussars, all strenuously cultivate the plaiting of the uniform. What makes the prestige of a uniform when you look at it? It is to have something that shines. And well, in fact, when you see a gold embroidery, you are almost sure to have at least one sub-officer and at least one officer. And depending on the richness of the embroidery, you can estimate more or less the rank. And the one who had the largest uniform wardrobe was the Marshal Murat. He could change his wardrobe two or three times a day. It was fur, it was embroidery, it was immense. On the other hand, what seems completely paradoxical is that Napoleon wore very, very little embroidery. The Emperor, in his eternal gray robes, is an exception that confirms the rule. All the officers' outfits are made of a debauchery of patterns in gold or silver thread and of blousons embroidered in canoes. All the art is to obtain a superb relief, favoring the reflections. But I can tell you, for a simple embroidery, it takes me, by doing this for some time, 40 hours of work. But hey, I do this in the morning, so it's a few hours a day, it's not my job. But you should know that they did it in the light of the candle, and there, with the techniques and the needles they had at the time, hats off to them. It's time to put the needles away and make the powder speak. June 14, 1807. 84,000 men will face off against Friedland in their rutilant uniforms. The Marshal Ney will still do wonders, and the Russian army will be broken. Napoleon's prestige will only get bigger, and the embroiderers will still have a lot of work to decorate the victorious uniforms with new shoulder pads, galons and blousons. Two centuries later, with much less martial motivation, François Lessage became a master of the art of making precious masterpieces and real moving panels. The Lessage workshop is also more than 150 years of tradition and a unique collection of authentic marvels. I open a box here, what we call the vests. In the 19th century, we dressed up like the apartments we lived in, where everything was embroidered. Here, the 52,000 samples referenced are a sublime memory of what inspired the first great seamstresses. In the 19th century, when you look at this, it's quite funny. There is a kind of amusing research of embroidery that could be inspired by the 18th century vests, with a huge amount of accessories that are no longer found. Today, the Lessage workshop works in close relationship with Christian Lacroix, or John Galliano, and his creations are much more than a fashion phenomenon. It is truly art. Which means to Karl Lagerfeld, I do not conceive of fashion without embroidery, nor of embroidery without Lessage. This sample was used last season by Christian for one of the dresses of the last collection. It can be that, as well as yesterday, today and tomorrow. Luxury creator, with his know-how, François Lessage has a rare power, to be above fashion. Waterloo. The sun is not yet very high, and yet it is already almost hot. For these enthusiasts who are about to relive the greatest exactitude on June 18, 1815, when they equip themselves, they already know everything they will sweat in their wool uniforms. When Napoleon engaged his last battle against the English troops of Wellington, he does not imagine that with this battle will end the time when wars were real fashion shows on a European scale. The Great Army is a fashion show, but it is a fashion show that is used to make war. The war at the time is done in sight. So we have color codes, in a way, on the battlefields. The French are in blue, the Austrians are in white, the Prussians are in green, the English are in red. Everyone has their own code. So when Napoleon wants to change the color of the French uniforms, to make them go from blue to white for economic reasons, because there is no need for dyeing, there is a shield in the French army, because there is the tradition of having the blue suit since the Revolution. The army's uniform review of Napoleon's troops takes an amazingly complicated turn. Fur, leather, wool and metal make up the uniforms that the recruits buy themselves, and often modify them according to their personal taste. In this fashion review, those who have the most chic outfits, while also being able to resist shock, are the cavalry officers. So the cross between the leather straps and the brambles, with the buttons that held together, are in fact an optimal protection, if we can say, against the blows of the sabers, in any case, on the trench or on the flat. But the sabers of the Hussars or the steel leathers of the Maréchal Ney will not be able to do anything against the British machine gun, then the Prussians, who arrive in reinforcements. The Horses Guards can close the hold on the Emperor's last grenades. Waterloo is also the definitive victory of the British style, which will reign supreme over masculine elegance. The evolution towards the three-piece suit, a symbol of modern virility, will have finally been imposed by combatants in kilts. At the fall of the Empire in 1815, the English gentleman definitely imposed his chic everywhere in Europe. Dress shoes, vests, panties with large boots. This look is truly the starting point for the building of the great classic of the masculine suit, sober, simple and dark. Europe, after decades of bloody clashes, finds a well-deserved period of peace, which rhymes with the prosperity of the bourgeoisie. Proud of their success, they adopt a very characteristic silhouette. The silhouette of the 1820s and 1830s, let's call it the bourgeoisie. These absolutely vertical, camped silhouettes, which consisted of insisting on the way of showing, in a way, its capacity and its assurance. And on the other hand, it is very curious to see to what extent these bodies also have to translate a kind of enrichment. And I believe that we cannot escape the way in which the belly takes on a role. Hence the object, moreover, of a certain number of mockery, mockery addressed by the illustrators. I think of Daumier with, on the one hand, the flammable, and on the other hand, the powerful, who are, as I said earlier, but it is certain that the bourgeoisie is honoured by this kind of wearing of this body having a certain magnitude. As a result, the vest, which has the formidable privilege of maintaining and adorning the belly of the bourgeois, becomes the always very chic revealer of its financial success. From the 1830s, in a society where getting rich at all costs is an ideal, in response to young people, it becomes a good tone to suffer from vague souls, listening to the melancholic scales of Frédéric Chopin. It is the vogue of Romanticism. Young women, dressed in the beautiful fur, as in the medieval era, play with puffy sleeves, in a ball-like style, in the Polish style, and finally in a gigot. They look like big birds. However, these veiled robes do not give a feeling of lightness. On the contrary, they bring to life the portion of the corset, or semi-rigid fabrics, transforming, in the name of aesthetics, women again into hieratic creatures. Feminine cambria continues to be thought of as a necessary form for the feminine body, as a form that identifies it, you see. And I think it was considered an aesthetic because it reflected, in the eyes of the actors of the time, a kind of fragility of the body. And at the same time, a difficulty in walking, you see. A bit like if... Feminine walking can only exist if it is stuck. During the 1830s, it ended with lightness, the simplicity and sensuality of the fashion of the First Empire. In the image of this talented meloman, who had the airs of the countess Belgiojoso, the romantic jewelry of the time, the bourgeois spirit forces women to follow a partition composed by superb necklaces revealing a skin that is always very clear. In the mirror plays, only the gaze can be ardent, while keeping a very discreet makeup. The bourgeois does not show off, she dresses up, says Paul Perret in La Parisienne. During this romantic period, the women who refuse this role of beautified are often enthusiastic Amazones. This is the case of the novelist Georges Sand, who loves to ride around a pond or a sea of ​​devils. But for her, riding was above all a way to practice certain dress audacity. The countess of Agus evokes in her memoirs the calm strength and masculine look of Georges Sand in salt. She describes with precision her black velvet gown and her man's hat adorned with a white veil flowing in the wind. The practice of dress audacity was the only exception to strict clothing rules dictated by the Napoleon Code. Any use of clothing contrary to one's sex must be subject to a request for dismissal at the prefecture. But the desire for emancipation of Georges Sand was the strongest. In 1847, she writes, I got myself a vest, pants and a big gray dress. With a hat and tie, I was flying from one end to the other of Paris. No one paid attention to me and did not suspect my disguise. While some women dream of pants, young men can spend hours in front of their mirror in the name of the Dandy ideal. The Dandy's toilet masterpiece is the setting up of a simple strip of muslin barely hemmed. In this exercise of a tie knot, all these gentlemen were inspired by an Englishman who elevated elegance to the level of an art and cultivated paradoxes. Brumel confided, If you have noticed, it is that I am not elegant. His disciples therefore wear an outfit of impeccable texture and cut into the best fabric on the market, but which must in no case appear new. Such perseverance in excellence is also a form of militant approach. Another way to consider Dandyism is to see in Dandyism the last fires of resistance of a few individuals to banalization, to the aesthetic laminoir that constitutes the uniformization of silhouettes and appearances in the industrial and democratic era of the 19th century. Other great characters, such as Barbette de Réveilly, Count Robert de Montesquieu or Oscar Wilde, will wear the spirit of Dandy until the end of the 19th century, against the winds and tides of elegance, made and ready to wear. By taking one last look in the mirror, these men are the reflection of an eternal English chic that is not about to be out of fashion. If London, in the 19th century, became in a way the world capital of masculine elegance, it is thanks to its sabiro tailors, and in particular to the renown of Henry Poole, who dressed the tsars, emperors or kings. It was here, from 1804, that the idea of the complete costume, a true uniform of power and respectability, was born. Today, this immutable perfection must have gained in lightness without losing its form, while retaining, of course, very dark shades. Everyone now has heated houses, central heating, heating in their cars, and so therefore things become much, much thinner. The interior is therefore much more difficult to make than my grandfather's time, when we were working with what I call blankets. So we have come with a kit up through time. Henry Poole remains a sure value and has just opened a boutique in Beijing. The rich Chinese businessmen will be able to wear these famous cashmere laces, always of a rare quality. A great specialist in over-size, as at the time of the first dandy, Henry Poole has more than 6,000 references of customer measurements. While this perfection of the cut lives up to 90% of the male clientele, the extreme finesse and flexibility of the fabric also attracts admirers. And of course, occasionally, this is a customer's wife coming in, and whilst the husband is being fitted, she suddenly spies a length of cashmere and she says to her husband, Do you think Henry Poole would make me a little jacket of this? Of course we say yes to all that, and the customer can even answer. In this temple of masculine elegance, we finally understand better why Henry Poole is a unique label, to appear both chic and serious, without losing the sense of humour. From the middle of the 19th century, textile creation enters a new era, notably with the progressive appearance of the jacquard trade. The genius idea of this son of Canut-Lyon is to use perforated cards to programme a complex and repetitive work. The distribution of perforations triggers, in the right place, a movement allowing to separate the thread and to train the shuttle to weave. With this idea of binary programming of weaving, which prefigures computer logic, the manufacturing time is divided by two. But in the face of progress, a single weaving trade replaces the work of four workers. Manufacturers can thus follow the whims of fashion more quickly, but they will also have to face the first workers' revolts. Confection takes a new turn with the appearance of the sewing machine, invented by a small French tailor named Timonier. Subsequently, Howe and St-Ger will perfect the tool. But the real revolution on a large scale in the art of clothing begins in the 1850s, with the multiplication of the first large Parisian shops. These screens of desire, as the novelist Émile Zola calls them in his novel, The Happiness of Ladies, become temples of elegance that can be seen multiplying simultaneously in England and the United States. The department store became a vital part of how people saw themselves dressing and influenced many women's garments or styles of garments. As you see in the department store today, you had the option of trying all of them, being fitted into garments of a greater variety than you would if you went to a dressmaker, for instance, and the department stores frequently offered copies of the latest contemporary fashions. So that you could be assured that you were getting as close to the latest fashion as humanly possible. With this novelty of presentation, these fashion victims of the court can more easily imagine wearing a taffeta-blue dress or a red silk one. Fascinated by this game of resemblance, other less uptight customers have to bow to the ceremonial trial. After having fixed the cage, reminiscent of the 18th-century articulated baskets, the airy ballet of jupons begins, and finally, the arrangement of the dress, under the watchful eye of Worth. What is very interesting about this character, who is particularly interested in the idea of a total silhouette, by demanding of some of his customers that they see him before going out, is to see that this man, who had extraordinary power, who was nicknamed the dictator, hated acrylonitrile, and in fact, he didn't manage to get it removed many years ago, which corresponded to the exhaustion of this form. Worth took advantage of this fashion, which requires 14 metres of fabric for a single acrylonitrile dress. As an excellent businessman, he added to the price of the production that of the exclusivity of his stockings. With Charles-Frédéric Worth, the couturier definitely goes from the status of an anonymous craftsman to that of a renowned designer for his stockings. With him, the couture becomes the haute couture. The queen of acrylonitrile takes on all her grandeur and finds all her splendour with the effects of vertiginous necklaces at the court of the empress Eugénie. The volume of the dresses will swell for the greatest pleasure of the caricaturists. Acrylonitrile was in fact a screen used to give volume to undergarments. She will keep this name to design dresses designed with prodigious armatures. The volume of these cage and hoop architectures reached its peak in 1858 with 3.5 metres in diameter. The following years marked the beginning of a decrease in their size, especially on the front and above all, on the back. Each action requires a lot of dexterity. Descending the stairs while barely seeing the steps or climbing the ladder is a whole ceremonial for these ladies of the world. If the engravings and the first fashion magazines expose the splendour of acrylonitrile, this fashion opposes and divides the writers. Alfred de Musset was the first to use acrylonitrile as a form of clothing. A certain fact is certain. The period of acrylonitrile is the occasion of a toilet flush. Tonight, these ladies wore their seventh outfit of the day, the most elegant to fill their bullet journal. Jumping or fluttering, these ladies in their acrylonitrile are the embodiment of movement. Fashion is also changing more and more rapidly. Acrylonitrile will be replaced by less voluminous but still as complex to wear or make, including by an expert of today's costumes. In the heart of a 19th-century Parisian district, there is a unique place when it comes to the costumes of Danielle Boutard. Having studied many original costumes in museums, she likes to show the existence of women wearing these costumes. The era of acrylonitrile is no secret to her. It's beautiful, these shoulder collars. Yes, but I wanted to make these dresses as graceful as women when you look at the portraits. Of course, the shoulders, the neck, all that, it was pretty. And the sleeve, the little sleeve, it just hid the part of the arm that was not pretty. The little hem. It was very, very studied. It's very, very beautiful. Some of Danielle's costumes are made directly according to patterns but to gain authenticity, she goes even further in the sense of detail. Here, for example, the top of the corsage is made with a dress, a period dress in which we cut to make the corsage, but it's what gives the closest to the truth. This fabric, which is a period fabric, is more than 1,880 years old. After more than 30 years of experience, Danielle Boutard is still as rigorous when it comes to giving history back to elegance. In 1885, whether here in the Bay of Somme or all over Europe, the age of time is paced by the panache of steam engines. Locomotives now sweeping all regions of the urban world in constant expansion and the countrysides begin to depopulate. In the steam trains, aristocrats enjoy champagne with first-class noblemen while workers play cards with third-class men. All social categories remain very compartmentalized. Fashion is like this distribution from the first carriage to the lowest carriage. The quality of the fabrics would decline. The poorer you get, the more difficult it is to get in black. So a black man's suit in the lower-class carriage will have a faintly green tinge to it because the dye wouldn't be as fast. In the aristocratic carriage, the black of a man's suit would be a very rich, deep black. If masculine elegance becomes more and more in dark shades, it begins to get tired of lace and lace-up. The man, who begins to appreciate the speed more and more, takes an interest in the jacket or a simple jacket for the less fortunate. These two clothes, they have one thing in common. They combine a straight cut where all the attention is focused on the valorization of the shoulders. This mutation marks a deeper evolution in the conception of the masculine suit. The quality of the wool becomes extremely important because it is a softer fabric. So it requires a cutting and sewing work that is more refined and thicker so that it tends to hold itself almost by itself. The more we advance in the 19th and 20th centuries, the more we wear our own clothes. If masculine outfits give full power to freedom of movement, the bourgeoisie, with their imposing faux-ass dresses and their lace-up, still lack singular ease. The year 1888 marks an ultimate paroxysm. Never has the cult of thin waist been so pronounced. Never has the chest been projected forward as much as the buttocks backwards. Fashion imposes a feminine silhouette in an S shape. The designers in the late 19th century had devised a system that made a woman look like a chair. And when they achieved this great projection in the back, they had to do something that was quite the contrary. So beginning in the late 1890s, the silhouette becomes straighter and straighter until it becomes an absolute I. In the last years of the century, the corset has always imposed a cramped attitude. The skirt, flat at the waist, expands in a corollary to the floor. The collars impose a high-waisted head, which must also support voluminous hats. These women, who move only in calèche, will meet the desire of the bicycle boom. The ideas of the Rational Dress Society, a dress code designed to get rid of women's useless fabrics, have come a long way. The 20th century is approaching at full speed, not always very assured. Freedom of movement is on the rise, and the irony of these ladies in their soon-to-be-anachronistic toilets will stop it.