Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791
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Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791
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Overview
Fabricating Women examines the social institution of the seamstresses’ guild in France from the time of Louis XIV to the Revolution. In contrast with previous scholarship on women and gender in the early modern period, Clare Haru Crowston asserts that the rise of the absolute state, with its centralizing and unifying tendencies, could actually increase women’s economic, social, and legal opportunities and allow them to thrive in corporate organizations such as the guild. Yet Crowston also reveals paradoxical consequences of the guild’s success, such as how its growing membership and visibility ultimately fostered an essentialized femininity that was tied to fashion and appearances.
Situating the seamstresses’ guild as both an economic and political institution, Crowston explores in particular its relationship with the all-male tailors’ guild, which had dominated the clothing fabrication trade in France until women challenged this monopoly during the seventeenth century. Combining archival evidence with visual images, technical literature, philosophical treatises, and fashion journals, she also investigates the techniques the seamstresses used to make and sell clothing, how the garments reflected and shaped modern conceptions of femininity, and guild officials’ interactions with royal and municipal authorities. Finally, by offering a revealing portrait of these women’s private lives—explaining, for instance, how many seamstresses went beyond traditional female boundaries by choosing to remain single and establish their own households—Crowston challenges existing ideas about women’s work and family in early modern Europe.
Although clothing lay at the heart of French economic production, social distinction, and cultural identity, Fabricating Women is the first book to investigate this immense and archetypal female guild in depth. It will be welcomed by students and scholars of French and European history, women’s and labor history, fashion and technology, and early modern political economy.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822383062 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/07/2001 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 528 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Clare Haru Crowston is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Read an Excerpt
Fabricating women
The seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791By Clare Haru Crowston
Duke University Press
ISBN: 0-8223-2666-3
Chapter One
Seamstresses and the Culture of Clothing in Old Regime France
Eighteenth-century France witnessed a dramatic rise in the consumption of clothing, particularly in Paris and other cities. Daniel Roche has documented a "clothing revolution" between 1700 and 1789, characterized by a substantial growth in the size and value of Parisian wardrobes as well as a new level of diversity in garments and accessories, colors, and fabrics. For the first time, elements of personal taste, choice, and superfluity entered the attire of the middling orders and the working people. Across Parisian society, women significantly outconsumed men, acquiring larger and more expensive wardrobes than their husbands, brothers, and fathers. A new fashion industry sprang to life to meet increasing demand, staffed by legions of female artisans and merchants working for a predominantly female clientele. The realm of fashion, it was increasingly agreed, was a woman's land in which citizenship was acquired by birth alone.
Contemporaries and modern observers have both often accepted this conclusion, tacitly agreeing that women are drawn by their very nature to clothing and consumption. Beginning in the eighteenth century, however, critics began to refute this view by arguing that the femininity of fashion was a cultural and socialphenomenon, called into being by the very prevalence of such ideas about women. According to burgeoning feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft, women invested more than men in money and attention to their clothing because they had been taught that appearances were their female destiny. This argument found echoes in sociological and historical studies of the consumption of material goods in early modern Europe. In his classic study of the leisure class, Thorstein Veblen interpreted women's disproportionate consumption of clothing and other goods as a function of the social role they filled in displaying family wealth and status. Many historians followed Veblen's lead in analyzing women's role in the rise of consumer culture in eighteenth-century Europe. Recently, scholars have taken this analysis further by focusing on the ways in which new practices of shopping and fashionable dressing were coded as "feminine" by contemporary observers, and they have even suggested that the construction of a "modern female subject" was fundamentally tied up with the emergence of a gendered consumer culture.
This gendered examination of consumption is part of a wider effort to uncover the cultural and social origins behind European economic transformation. Pioneering studies of consumer culture in the 1980s complained about the excessive attention accorded to technological innovation and economic production in accounts of the Industrial Revolution. In particular, they criticized the reigning assumption that demand for finished goods naturally expanded with a growth in supply. In developing cultural explanations for rising consumption, their studies focused on shifts in attitudes toward material goods and on the commercial techniques adopted to incite demand. This cultural turn was a necessary corrective but it may have moved too far, encouraging historians to focus on the meaning and dynamics of material culture and consumption to the exclusion of production. The seamstresses' trade provides an important example of the need to balance these factors and to reconstruct the complex imbrication among production, consumption, and the specific nature of the goods themselves.
The very definition of the seamstresses' trade underlines the close ties that existed between production and consumption in contemporaries' minds. According to the 1675 statutes, a seamstress was a woman who made articles of clothing for other women and for children. Producer and consumer were thus united by their sex and their privileged relation to clothing. The timing of the guild's creation further supports the link between production and consumption. From 1675 on, the seamstresses' guild attracted legions of new participants eager to profit from the social and economic privileges it offered in a labor market with restricted opportunities for women. The result was a large, skilled, and relatively inexpensive labor force keen to make and sell articles of female clothing. A push from the production side thus acted as a major catalyst for women's capacity to acquire new, custom-made garments in the latest styles and fashions. It was not merely new ways of conceiving of consumption or femininity that encouraged them to do so. Seamstresses acquired their trade niche as a result of cultural associations of femininity with needlework, yet once they gained legal status their swelling numbers inspired a growth in consumption, which ultimately reinforced and subtly transformed existing ideas about women's work and femininity.
Another factor intervening between the forces of production and consumption was the clothing itself. To some degree, fashion was an independent variable, generated neither by changes in the organization of production nor by cultural ideas about femininity, consumption, and clothing. The origins of new fashions were often as mystifying for contemporaries as they presently are for historians. Nevertheless, the introduction of new styles in clothing and accessories could have a major impact on production and consumtpion. This was particularly true of novelties that did not conform to existing guild monopolies, as we will see below. Fashion generated conflict and competition in the garment trades even as it stimulated discussion and debate among observers. Together, these three factors-the practice and organization of labor; cultural concepts of gender, consumption, and fashion; and the objects of fashion itself-shaped, influenced, and informed each other over time. They did not always operate in synchronicity, but their evolution cannot be understood separately and no absolute causal primacy may be assigned among them.
In this chapter, I will develop these arguments by examining three moments in the history of fashion. Located from the 1670s to the 1780s, each of these moments witnessed a striking change in women's styles of apparel, accompanied by a flurry of published debates about fashion as well as significant developments in the garment trades. The first moment took place in the 1670s, when the seamstresses of Paris acquired an exclusively female guild with the right to make clothing for women and children but not for men. At the same time, a crucial transformation was taking place in the female wardrobe, as the expensive and cumbersome two-piece formal ladies' dress was replaced by a simpler, one-piece gown. Seamstresses soon monopolized the new manteau dress, which they produced for women from a surprisingly wide social spectrum. Not coincidentally, the 1670s also witnessed the birth of the first contemporary periodical to focus on fashion, which reported on the spread of the manteau and the growing role of fashion professionals outside the royal court.
The second break occurred some fifty years later in the 1720s, with the emergence of hoopskirts, which were worn under the loose robe volante, or "sack dress" as it was known in England. With flowing back pleats and voluminous skirts, women now appeared in a shockingly new silhouette. The garments quickly generated a stir among observers who condemned them from a religious point of view or mocked them from a satirical one. In 1725, this debate entered the world of work with a violent raid by tailors' officials on a mistress seamstress. In the subsequent legal battle, tailors and seamstresses disputed the right to make the hoopskirts and whale-boned stays worn under the new dresses. Together, debates about women's fashions and legal conflicts among tailors and seamstresses helped to propagate the growing notion that the sphere of fashion and appearances was an essentially female domain, despite the persistence of male production rights.
The final moment is located in the 1770s and 1780s, with a third major change in the female wardrobe. Instead of ushering in a new dress standard, this period witnessed a proliferation of different styles of female attire and accessories. It was also marked by a new insistence on "natural" forms of dress and a turn away from heavy stays or hoopskirts. This transition echoed wider cultural developments in which medical writers and social critics increasingly insisted on a deference to nature in human society. In the late 1770s, women gained extended guild prerogatives in the production of female clothing, as the legal rights women had acquired in this sector were strengthened by the idea of a "natural" female role in needlework. The French Revolution formally consecrated innate labor rights in 1791, abolishing all guilds and permitting men and women to work freely in whatever trades they chose. From being a tacit or underlying force that informed, supported, or even contradicted law, "nature" thus emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century as the most important standard for judging society and culture, including women, fashion, and work.
This chapter begins with a reflection on the social and cultural role of clothing in Old Regime France, which serves as a background for the three moments discussed in detail. I then turn to an overview of the major developments in French women's fashion in each of the three time periods chosen. This review of fashion history is followed by an examination of the interplay in each period between discourses and representations of fashion on the one hand, and the vicissitudes of the garment trades on the other. As we will see, seamstresses usually did not create new styles. In all likelihood, they cannot lay claim to the manteau dress, the hoopskirt, or the many new styles of the 1770s. Nonetheless, it was seamstresses' capacity to make and sell such fashions in large quantities that made their diffusion possible. In turn, developments in the consumption and production of clothing together helped to change cultural ideas about clothing, fashion, and women's relation to them. The seamstresses were particularly important in this interplay because of their strong gender identity and the explicit link their trade drew between female creators and consumers of clothing.
The Social Role of Clothing
Clothing has long been recognized by anthropologists, sociologists, and historians as a key social and cultural signifying system. From the embroidered patterns on Indonesian betel-nut purses to the Old Regime nobleman's gold-embroidered suit and sword to the blue jeans of the late-twentieth century, styles of dress emit strong signals. First, they serve as visual markers that express and reinforce social taxonomies and their wearer's place within them. Even in today's apparently casual Western societies, a person's social status, economic situation, cultural values, and even political engagements can often at a glance be read in his or her attire. Clothing also conveys a visual interpretation of the ostensibly "natural" distinctions of age and gender, providing strictly delimited vocabularies within which men and women fashion their identities. It is the most vivid symbol of our transition from nature to culture, from biological male and female to men and women in society.
As Georg Simmel insisted, dress furnishes a meeting point between the collective and the individual, a place where social structures and hierarchies intersect with personal choices and tastes. As anyone who has hesitated in front of the mirror can attest, the act of dressing oneself each day is a complicated negotiation between the norms and judgments of the social world and the expression of a private identity, itself forged through a lifetime of such encounters. In a given context, more or less room for individual choice and the elaboration of a personal style exists depending on wealth, the rigidity of social hierarchies, the circulation of information, and the availability of different types of garments and accessories. With the daily choices they make, men and women send important signals to the outside world and to the self.
Of course, the interpretation of these messages is not straightforward; the possibility of intentional or accidental obscuring, misuse, or masquerading of social dress codes always exists. One constant anxiety is that individuals will take advantage of recognized codes to pass themselves off as something they are not. Literature is full of ambitious outsiders who ape the costume of their betters to gain illicit entry to the group. Like Moliere's bourgeois gentleman, however, the bounder's constant failure to deceive, and the ridicule he or she attracts, reassuringly demonstrate that true nobility is in the blood and not in the suit. The same moral results from the unfailingly valiant character of the noble foundling dressed in peasant's clothing. Garments may serve to reflect and display one's superior status, these stories tell us, but they cannot substitute for it. The frequency of such tales, however, betrays strong misgivings about the possible discrepancy between appearances and social categories and the fear of outsiders who might successfully infiltrate the elite. The rise of a fashion system in fourteenth-century Europe has thus been explained as an attempt to secure the tools of social and cultural distinction. Following a "trickle-down" logic, fashion originated as courtiers introduced swift changes in their styles of apparel to reconfirm their social distance from wealthy commoners.
The social weight of fashion, however, is not exhausted by strategies of upward social aspiration. In societies with a wide range of styles, a considerable play within and against established dress codes is possible. Marie-Antoinette bore very little resemblance to a real shepherdess when she dressed up at the Trianon in Versailles, but she acted out a broader, elite discourse preaching a return to "natural" ways of living. In contrast to the linguistic systems to which it is often compared, clothing permits its wearer to resist established hierarchies and traditions without manifesting overt defiance. If, for example, the rules regarding male and female attire at the court of Versailles were intended to ensure the visual prestige and honor of the absolutist monarchy, courtiers could exploit nuances within the established code to express their greater attachment to or alienation from the king. A circle of young aristocrats thus expressed their frustration with the tradition-bound court of the aging Louis XIV with an exaggeratedly fashionable, foppish way of dressing. Their dress choices allowed them to display a form of cultural resistance, without engaging in open political opposition.
It is also doubtful that any society harbors a unitary clothing system that is transparent and meaningful to all its members in the same way. An article of clothing like a corset or a pair of pants could signify quite different things to different groups of people. If an aristocrat's strikingly luxurious attire emitted a clear message of superiority to those below him on the social scale, it also contained nuances of detail, such as the pattern of his lace sleeve cuffs or the design of his silver shoe buckles, which could only be read and appreciated by members of his own milieu. A number of distinct taxonomies of clothing could thus coexist, clash, and overlap within one city or across multiple spaces constructed socially, visually, or politically. Choices of apparel could aim to fulfill aspirations apart from simple socioeconomic emulation, including much more subtle and localized struggles over cultural or social power and self-identity.
As the proliferation of studies on French fashion attest, few societies have accorded as much explicit attention to clothing and appearances as Old Regime France. From the seventeenth century to the Revolution, France was known by subjects and by foreigners as a place where one's exterior aspect counted more than anything else. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau declared in disgust, Paris was the city where "everything is judged on appearances." Clothing formed a central part of the social and self-identity of an aristocrat, a Frenchman, a Parisian, a man, or a woman. The nobleman was instantly recognizable by his powdered wig, breeches, and jacket of fine cloth decorated with rich embroidery and precious stones, along with his hat and sword. By contrast, the working man's long pants were so well known that they would serve as a symbol of antiaristocratic fervor for the revolutionary sans-culottes.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
List of Figures and TablesList of Abreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Making the Goods
1. Seamstresses and the Culture of Clothing in Old Regime France
2. From Mending to modes: Trade Hierarchies and the Labor Market
3. Tools, Techniques, and Commercial Practices
Part Two: Making the Guilds
4. The Royal Government, Guilds, and the Seamstresses of Paris, Normandy, and Provence
5. The Tailors and the Seamstresses: Corporate Privilege, Gender, and the Law
6. Women’s Corporate Self-Government: The Administration of the Parisian Seamstresses’ Guild
Part Three: Making the Mistresses
7. Career Paths in the Seamstresses’ Trade: From Apprenticeship to Mistress-ship
8. Marriage, Fortune, and Family: The World of the Mistress Seamstress
9. Making the New Century: The Seamstresses, fin et suite
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
What People are Saying About This
A welcome contribution to the literature on women's work in preindustrial Europe. This is so well placed in the economic and social history of the period that it will become a classic among the books, that define the age.
— Daryl M. Hafter, author of European Women and Preindustrial Craft
Fabricating Women offers a richly textured and much needed look at the experience of working women that will enhance our understanding of the old regime in a variety of ways. This well-grounded portrait of one area of history simultaneously throws light on far broader issues, such as the role of the state, the working of the economy, and the legal status and economic opportunities of women.
— Gail Bossenga, author of The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille