November 12, 2014 • 33 mins
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 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Fro and I'm Trace Phoebe Wilson. We get a
lot of request to do more fashion related podcasts, uh
and specifically the one that we're going to talk about today. Uh.
(00:24):
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
ran the Paris fashion scene in the late eighteen hundreds.
He really was sort of bizar of fashion for France
(00:45):
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, but 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 garment and it went on people's bodies, which strikes
me as hilarious because the first time I met you
(01:07):
you were in a costume, So in my head you're
like a fashion nut like me. But the costume things
that can handle better than like the fashion things you know.
To me, they're all tied up together to get onto
the subject. Charles Frederick Worth was born October to William
(01:27):
and Mary Anne Worth in Lincolnshire, 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 life the tide
of affluence really shifted. His father was an alcoholic and
basically squandered the family fortune, and when Charles was around eleven,
(01:50):
he lost everything to the combination of drinking gambling, and
as a consequence, both Marianne and young Charles suddenly kind
of we're put in the position to have to support
the family. While his mother took 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
(02:11):
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 Lewis and Allenby, and he 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
(02:34):
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 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
(02:58):
of eras as represent and it through art, and he
basically observed the entire world of contemporary fashion that was
playing out in these fashions in these textile houses that
he was working in. By eighteen forty five, he felt
like he was ready to move out of the record's
office and into the actual world of fashion, so he
left his job at Louis and Allenby and moved to Paris.
(03:19):
His first job in France as a sales clerk at
Gaglon and Opeg was not only his first real step
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
(03:40):
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
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
(04:02):
that the shop provided. This got the attention of several
of Caalon's customers who would ask about Marie's lovely garments.
Worth saw 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.
(04:23):
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 our listeners, but prior to this, there was really
no such thing as walking into a store and purchasing
already made garment. So the idea of having a dress
(04:44):
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.
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
(05:06):
eight or ten or twelve, what do you have? It
was more like, here, my measurements make my outfit well,
And there's also little uniformity of sizes now right well,
but there's more than they're used to be before um
and prior to vanity sizing it was much more uniform.
But unfortunately this grand idea of words was not met
(05:30):
with enthusiasm by And. But buoyed by the fact that
his dresses were quickly becoming the talk of fashionable circles,
Worth eventually partnered with a Swedish man he met through
his work. His name was Otto Beaubert was after a
decade of working for the accessory shop that Worth set
(05:50):
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 Worth Shop wasn't really an instant 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
(06:12):
just was not the blockbuster that he and Bobert 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, for example,
asking a celebrity who they're wearing is to regor on
red carpets. But this was another concept that's pretty much
entirely worth doing. No one really talked about designers like
(06:35):
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, caschet attached to it where they
would be like, oh, this is the one Rosebert 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
(06:56):
one evening, Charles noticed the Princess Paul leaned the 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 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
(07:20):
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 francs for each,
which was certainly not cheap, but for someone of her rank,
it really was not a terrible expense, and she also
(07:40):
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 silver threading, and it
was embellised with daisies and diamonds, which just sounds happy
and sparkly to me. The ball was hosted by Napoleon
(08:01):
the Third and 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 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
(08:24):
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. 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.
(08:46):
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 to Charles Worth, he
really tended 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
(09:09):
when he went to Tulry to meet the Empress. You
would expect a man to be or anyone really informal
dress on such an occasion, but he had on casual
clothing in 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
(09:30):
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 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
(09:54):
been the genesis point of a lot of the stereotypes
that we have come up with around art. But his timing,
more importantly, when he 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
(10:16):
looking to up her game when it came to style
and fashion. She wasn't unfashionable, and she had style, but
she really 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
(10:39):
so while she had a natural style and she was
by all accounts very elegant, she really needed someone to
shape her 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 rooms, she ordered one
(11:00):
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 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
(11:21):
that court functions really required multiple wardrobe changes each day,
and wearing the same dress twice was something of an
image suicide. There are 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
(11:42):
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. And for everyone
else kind of in the higher strata of social structure,
if wanted to hang out at French Court, you really
better have a closet full of incredibly sumptuous finery. And
(12:06):
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 his shop was
said to be constantly clogged with carriages. The shop itself
was crowded with wealthy patrons who were there to socialize
and to be seen in the shop as well as
(12:26):
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 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
(12:48):
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.
It's like, it's like, what not aware that? Yeah, I mean,
I presume if you were going to visit him, you
probably already tried to be turned out and look as
(13:11):
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 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
(13:33):
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 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
(13:53):
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 a garment
or a gown should be executed or what cloth should
be used, but she basically always caved into what he
(14:16):
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
of Fashion. By eighteen sixty four, so five years into
his creative relationship with the Empress, Worth had become the
(14:37):
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.
So with that level of output, obviously he was not
doing all the stitching himself. Uh. He maintained the tegrity
(15:00):
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
that the interiors of the garment garments had to be
finished so well that they would rival the outside and
(15:22):
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
was exquisite silk and worth. Take advantage of having such
incredible fabrics so close by, and his adopted home country
(15:46):
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 or weaver,
whether 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
(16:09):
you may have surmised from our anecdote a few moments
ago about how he would critique lead 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 of really did cultivate this personality of being
a colectic, being a little bit nutty. He would often
(16:30):
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 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
(16:51):
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 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
(17:13):
in France, closed temporarily. Charles's greatest benefactor, of the Empress Eugenie,
was forced into exile, and the Rue de la Pay,
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 Worth reopened, surprisingly to even greater success. Although Otto
(17:36):
Boubat was no longer part of the business, he had
been uneasy about setting the shop up again after their
first Their first venture was so abruptly cut short due
to the political climate, so Worth brought bought out his
share of the empire for one point five million francs,
and while most of his French clients were gone, he
(17:57):
still had plenty of wealthy fans from the United States
and Europe who were happy to order downs. So business
was really booming, even though the climate was so much different.
So much though, that the tiny shop that started with
just fifty employees wound up swelling to a staff of
more than a thousand. Yeah. He, I mean, we we've
heard it so many times before when we've talked about
(18:20):
design houses or you know, people that uh 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.
(18:42):
When the groundbreaking down maker died in five 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 guested and
Jean Philippe inherited the family business, and that worked out
(19:03):
really well for a lot of years. Gaston handled the
business side of things, while Jean Philipe did 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
(19:25):
Paul Pore. As that all took hold, the House of
Worth found its business slowly dwindling year by year, 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.
(19:48):
And we'll start with one that did not stick around,
but it completely defined Victorian fashion for a lot of people,
and that is the bustle. So over time he evolved
the crinoline, so the wide bot 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,
(20:08):
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 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
(20:30):
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, 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. I know, to the
modern eye and people that are not into historical fashion,
(20:50):
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 be fair, there people who thought
it was ridiculous that at the time. I remember editorial
cartoons that were like Lady with a snail attached to
the back of her body. So other dressmakers were often
(21:11):
dubious of new technology, but Worth really embraced the sewing
machine as a way to expedite production without sacrificing quality,
and he also used manufactured trends on his garments before
people widely accepted that either. Yeah, he was just ahead
of his time in all in his visions for fashion
(21:33):
and in another completely new approach to fashion. Remember, prior
to this time, all pretty much all garments were made
to order, specifically for the wearer. But Worth would often
sell his original garments 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
(21:56):
was selling the rights to make copies. So design licensing
was born with him, and on a related business model,
he would actually make ready to wear gowns to sell
to department stores abroad. Department stores were 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
(22:20):
being the designer of really lavish gowns for the elite
ladies 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
(22:41):
thought this was really a pity, so he shortened the
hymns 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
(23:01):
where it still was full length, but forgetting about town
and running 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
(23:24):
gentlemen and fine attire. 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 of view fabric samples and design sketches, or they
could go in this room to try on outfits that
had um the specialty lighting designed for it. It was
(23:48):
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 garment 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 seasonal showings of different
(24:11):
designers and that really started with Charles Worth. Yeah when
you if anybody watched his 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 still works today, and it's
(24:32):
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 and
his dressmakers and drapers developed a series of pattern slopers.
(24:56):
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 these garments but still maintaining
(25:17):
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 the name of your
(25:37):
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 Bertina, uh ladies, in Marie Antoinette era would
(25:57):
never have said, oh, I'm 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 only serviced people of the French court.
(26:22):
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 necessarily design houses but just produced clothing.
(26:43):
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
ead couture and to be able to claim stas as
an oada to your house, a designer had to be
(27:03):
recognized as such by a division of the French Ministry
of Industry known as the shamp Syndicale. 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 of hand finished custom made clothing had
(27:25):
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 are on the list at any given time.
(27:47):
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 a design
and an execution standpoint for garments. Yeah, it's one of
those things you'll see people talking about couture and mentioning
(28:07):
oat couture. 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 okatur like you, Jean Paul Gautier
is an officially recognized Oka Tour designer, but most designers
are not. Again, this is a very short list, uh,
(28:28):
and it really does represent an extremely high standard. There
was a video 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 ocatur gown, and
you see all of the hours of painstaking labor that
really really technically skilled stitchers and artisans go through to
(28:49):
apply embellishment and make sure every scene is perfect, and
every scene again 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
(29:11):
sloppy usage as well. I'm not judging anybody, but just
for clarity, that's the scoop without couture. Do you also
have listener mails? Since we were talking about beautiful things today,
I thought I would talk about a few of the
beautiful postcards that we have gotten from listeners. I won't
read all of the postcards, but I will describe them
and talk about who they're from. The first one is
(29:31):
from our listener Jackie, and it is the Red Room.
This is in the House on the Rock, which is
in Wisconsin actually, but it is phenomenal and I kind
of think we should start putting scans or at least
photographs of some of these really amazing postcards on our
Facebook page. Maybe. Uh And she just does wrote us
(29:52):
a cute little note. But it's a beautiful, gorgeous picture
of this incredibly sumptuously appointed room. I can't even just
scribe all of the things that are in it. Their
string instruments, there are some lovely taxidermy, there's some beautiful
ornate guilted furniture. It's just amazing. It's gorgeous. Uh. My
(30:13):
next postcard is from our listener, Lieutenant Jessica. She talked
about how she was introduced to the podcast by her
sister and how she is currently in Japan and she
stayed entertained on the long flight and on some of
the bullet train rides listening to podcasts, and she sent
us a really really beautiful postcard of mischievous kiddies and kimono.
(30:36):
And it's absolutely darling. It's an old woodblock and I
love it so much. I can't even describe it. And
then again, I want to really put these up because
they're so beautiful. So and this last one, I when
I got it, I gasped because I love it so much.
It is from our listener, Jesse and it is a
silk screen illustration of uh Elsa Lanchester is the Brida
(30:59):
Frankenstein that she did and it is absolutely gorgeous. I
may frame it. And she went back and listened to
the Elsa episodes after we did the Bella Lagosi episodes,
so she was in the in the mood as we
did our Halloween stuff. She, for the record, is in
the Spanish Dracula camp. We talked about in the Bella
episodes that they had simultaneously filmed a second version of
(31:19):
Dracula in Spanish at night after the main production would
rap for the day. And how there are some film
historians today who think that the Spanish version is actually
Abotter film. Apparently Jesse is in that camp. So thank
you so much for all of our listeners that send
us postcards. I do want to try to figure out
away time permitting, which is always the challenge, to get
some of these really beautiful ones up on our Facebook
(31:40):
page or elsewhere, just so people can also enjoy the
cool stuff that you guys are sending us. I love
it so much, so thank you. If you would like
to write to us, really, the best way to get
your stuff seen if you want us to address the
thing is via our email, which is history podcast. At
how stuff Works dot com. You can also connect with
us at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History at
missed in History on Twitter, missed in History dot tumbler
(32:03):
dot com, pinterest dot com slash missed in History. I
cannot wait to pin a bunch of Worth gowns. There
are already a bunch up there in our historic fashion board.
And you can also visit missed in History dot spreadshirt
dot com where you can get t shirts, bags, mugs
for your warm coffee that you will need this winter,
hoodies so will also keep you toasty, etcetera. Uh. If
(32:26):
you would like to learn a little bit related to
what we talked about today, if you go to our
parents site how Stuff Works, and you type in Charles
Worth's name in the search bar, you will get an
article called how French Traditions Work, and one page of
it does talk about fashion and how It mentioned briefly
how Charles Worth, even though he was originally an Englishman,
he really sort of associated himself with France for the
entirety of his career, so France sort of claims him
(32:48):
as their's and he's mentioned in that article. You can
also visit our history website missed in History dot com
if you would like to look at our entire archive
of episodes at show notes. Tracy has written a wonderful
blog post on how to find any back episodes if
you have a subject you're interested in and want to
know if we did it. We used to try to
(33:08):
search for things and and send them people's way when
they inquired about topics that we had already done. But
the volume of mail and Facebook notes about that is
getting to be a little bit more than we can
possibly humanly keep up with. So read Tracy's fabulous blog
posts and you will know how to do that yourself.
Uh And if you would like to learn about almost
anything your mind can contrary, you can do that at
(33:29):
our parent site, how stuff Works dot com, or visit
us at mr history dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Because it has to works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Fro and I'm Trace Phoebe Wilson. We get a
lot of request to do more fashion related podcasts, uh
and specifically the one that we're going to talk about today. Uh.
(00:24):
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
ran the Paris fashion scene in the late eighteen hundreds.
He really was sort of bizar of fashion for France
(00:45):
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, but 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 garment and it went on people's bodies, which strikes
me as hilarious because the first time I met you
(01:07):
you were in a costume, So in my head you're
like a fashion nut like me. But the costume things
that can handle better than like the fashion things you know.
To me, they're all tied up together to get onto
the subject. Charles Frederick Worth was born October to William
(01:27):
and Mary Anne Worth in Lincolnshire, 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 life the tide
of affluence really shifted. His father was an alcoholic and
basically squandered the family fortune, and when Charles was around eleven,
(01:50):
he lost everything to the combination of drinking gambling, and
as a consequence, both Marianne and young Charles suddenly kind
of we're put in the position to have to support
the family. While his mother took 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
(02:11):
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 Lewis and Allenby, and he 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
(02:34):
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 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
(02:58):
of eras as represent and it through art, and he
basically observed the entire world of contemporary fashion that was
playing out in these fashions in these textile houses that
he was working in. By eighteen forty five, he felt
like he was ready to move out of the record's
office and into the actual world of fashion, so he
left his job at Louis and Allenby and moved to Paris.
(03:19):
His first job in France as a sales clerk at
Gaglon and Opeg was not only his first real step
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
(03:40):
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
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
(04:02):
that the shop provided. This got the attention of several
of Caalon's customers who would ask about Marie's lovely garments.
Worth saw 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.
(04:23):
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 our listeners, but prior to this, there was really
no such thing as walking into a store and purchasing
already made garment. So the idea of having a dress
(04:44):
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.
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
(05:06):
eight or ten or twelve, what do you have? It
was more like, here, my measurements make my outfit well,
And there's also little uniformity of sizes now right well,
but there's more than they're used to be before um
and prior to vanity sizing it was much more uniform.
But unfortunately this grand idea of words was not met
(05:30):
with enthusiasm by And. But buoyed by the fact that
his dresses were quickly becoming the talk of fashionable circles,
Worth eventually partnered with a Swedish man he met through
his work. His name was Otto Beaubert was after a
decade of working for the accessory shop that Worth set
(05:50):
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 Worth Shop wasn't really an instant 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
(06:12):
just was not the blockbuster that he and Bobert 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, for example,
asking a celebrity who they're wearing is to regor on
red carpets. But this was another concept that's pretty much
entirely worth doing. No one really talked about designers like
(06:35):
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, caschet attached to it where they
would be like, oh, this is the one Rosebert 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
(06:56):
one evening, Charles noticed the Princess Paul leaned the 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 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
(07:20):
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 francs for each,
which was certainly not cheap, but for someone of her rank,
it really was not a terrible expense, and she also
(07:40):
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 silver threading, and it
was embellised with daisies and diamonds, which just sounds happy
and sparkly to me. The ball was hosted by Napoleon
(08:01):
the Third and 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 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
(08:24):
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. 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.
(08:46):
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 to Charles Worth, he
really tended 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
(09:09):
when he went to Tulry to meet the Empress. You
would expect a man to be or anyone really informal
dress on such an occasion, but he had on casual
clothing in 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
(09:30):
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 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
(09:54):
been the genesis point of a lot of the stereotypes
that we have come up with around art. But his timing,
more importantly, when he 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
(10:16):
looking to up her game when it came to style
and fashion. She wasn't unfashionable, and she had style, but
she really 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
(10:39):
so while she had a natural style and she was
by all accounts very elegant, she really needed someone to
shape her 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 rooms, she ordered one
(11:00):
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 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
(11:21):
that court functions really required multiple wardrobe changes each day,
and wearing the same dress twice was something of an
image suicide. There are 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
(11:42):
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. And for everyone
else kind of in the higher strata of social structure,
if wanted to hang out at French Court, you really
better have a closet full of incredibly sumptuous finery. And
(12:06):
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 his shop was
said to be constantly clogged with carriages. The shop itself
was crowded with wealthy patrons who were there to socialize
and to be seen in the shop as well as
(12:26):
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 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
(12:48):
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.
It's like, it's like, what not aware that? Yeah, I mean,
I presume if you were going to visit him, you
probably already tried to be turned out and look as
(13:11):
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 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
(13:33):
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 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
(13:53):
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 a garment
or a gown should be executed or what cloth should
be used, but she basically always caved into what he
(14:16):
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
of Fashion. By eighteen sixty four, so five years into
his creative relationship with the Empress, Worth had become the
(14:37):
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.
So with that level of output, obviously he was not
doing all the stitching himself. Uh. He maintained the tegrity
(15:00):
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
that the interiors of the garment garments had to be
finished so well that they would rival the outside and
(15:22):
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
was exquisite silk and worth. Take advantage of having such
incredible fabrics so close by, and his adopted home country
(15:46):
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 or weaver,
whether 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
(16:09):
you may have surmised from our anecdote a few moments
ago about how he would critique lead 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 of really did cultivate this personality of being
a colectic, being a little bit nutty. He would often
(16:30):
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 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
(16:51):
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 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
(17:13):
in France, closed temporarily. Charles's greatest benefactor, of the Empress Eugenie,
was forced into exile, and the Rue de la Pay,
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 Worth reopened, surprisingly to even greater success. Although Otto
(17:36):
Boubat was no longer part of the business, he had
been uneasy about setting the shop up again after their
first Their first venture was so abruptly cut short due
to the political climate, so Worth brought bought out his
share of the empire for one point five million francs,
and while most of his French clients were gone, he
(17:57):
still had plenty of wealthy fans from the United States
and Europe who were happy to order downs. So business
was really booming, even though the climate was so much different.
So much though, that the tiny shop that started with
just fifty employees wound up swelling to a staff of
more than a thousand. Yeah. He, I mean, we we've
heard it so many times before when we've talked about
(18:20):
design houses or you know, people that uh 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.
(18:42):
When the groundbreaking down maker died in five 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 guested and
Jean Philippe inherited the family business, and that worked out
(19:03):
really well for a lot of years. Gaston handled the
business side of things, while Jean Philipe did 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
(19:25):
Paul Pore. As that all took hold, the House of
Worth found its business slowly dwindling year by year, 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.
(19:48):
And we'll start with one that did not stick around,
but it completely defined Victorian fashion for a lot of people,
and that is the bustle. So over time he evolved
the crinoline, so the wide bot 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,
(20:08):
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 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
(20:30):
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, 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. I know, to the
modern eye and people that are not into historical fashion,
(20:50):
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 be fair, there people who thought
it was ridiculous that at the time. I remember editorial
cartoons that were like Lady with a snail attached to
the back of her body. So other dressmakers were often
(21:11):
dubious of new technology, but Worth really embraced the sewing
machine as a way to expedite production without sacrificing quality,
and he also used manufactured trends on his garments before
people widely accepted that either. Yeah, he was just ahead
of his time in all in his visions for fashion
(21:33):
and in another completely new approach to fashion. Remember, prior
to this time, all pretty much all garments were made
to order, specifically for the wearer. But Worth would often
sell his original garments 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
(21:56):
was selling the rights to make copies. So design licensing
was born with him, and on a related business model,
he would actually make ready to wear gowns to sell
to department stores abroad. Department stores were 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
(22:20):
being the designer of really lavish gowns for the elite
ladies 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
(22:41):
thought this was really a pity, so he shortened the
hymns 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
(23:01):
where it still was full length, but forgetting about town
and running 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
(23:24):
gentlemen and fine attire. 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 of view fabric samples and design sketches, or they
could go in this room to try on outfits that
had um the specialty lighting designed for it. It was
(23:48):
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 garment 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 seasonal showings of different
(24:11):
designers and that really started with Charles Worth. Yeah when
you if anybody watched his 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 still works today, and it's
(24:32):
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 and
his dressmakers and drapers developed a series of pattern slopers.
(24:56):
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 these garments but still maintaining
(25:17):
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 the name of your
(25:37):
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 Bertina, uh ladies, in Marie Antoinette era would
(25:57):
never have said, oh, I'm 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 only serviced people of the French court.
(26:22):
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 necessarily design houses but just produced clothing.
(26:43):
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
ead couture and to be able to claim stas as
an oada to your house, a designer had to be
(27:03):
recognized as such by a division of the French Ministry
of Industry known as the shamp Syndicale. 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 of hand finished custom made clothing had
(27:25):
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 are on the list at any given time.
(27:47):
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 a design
and an execution standpoint for garments. Yeah, it's one of
those things you'll see people talking about couture and mentioning
(28:07):
oat couture. 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 okatur like you, Jean Paul Gautier
is an officially recognized Oka Tour designer, but most designers
are not. Again, this is a very short list, uh,
(28:28):
and it really does represent an extremely high standard. There
was a video 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 ocatur gown, and
you see all of the hours of painstaking labor that
really really technically skilled stitchers and artisans go through to
(28:49):
apply embellishment and make sure every scene is perfect, and
every scene again 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
(29:11):
sloppy usage as well. I'm not judging anybody, but just
for clarity, that's the scoop without couture. Do you also
have listener mails? Since we were talking about beautiful things today,
I thought I would talk about a few of the
beautiful postcards that we have gotten from listeners. I won't
read all of the postcards, but I will describe them
and talk about who they're from. The first one is
(29:31):
from our listener Jackie, and it is the Red Room.
This is in the House on the Rock, which is
in Wisconsin actually, but it is phenomenal and I kind
of think we should start putting scans or at least
photographs of some of these really amazing postcards on our
Facebook page. Maybe. Uh And she just does wrote us
(29:52):
a cute little note. But it's a beautiful, gorgeous picture
of this incredibly sumptuously appointed room. I can't even just
scribe all of the things that are in it. Their
string instruments, there are some lovely taxidermy, there's some beautiful
ornate guilted furniture. It's just amazing. It's gorgeous. Uh. My
(30:13):
next postcard is from our listener, Lieutenant Jessica. She talked
about how she was introduced to the podcast by her
sister and how she is currently in Japan and she
stayed entertained on the long flight and on some of
the bullet train rides listening to podcasts, and she sent
us a really really beautiful postcard of mischievous kiddies and kimono.
(30:36):
And it's absolutely darling. It's an old woodblock and I
love it so much. I can't even describe it. And
then again, I want to really put these up because
they're so beautiful. So and this last one, I when
I got it, I gasped because I love it so much.
It is from our listener, Jesse and it is a
silk screen illustration of uh Elsa Lanchester is the Brida
(30:59):
Frankenstein that she did and it is absolutely gorgeous. I
may frame it. And she went back and listened to
the Elsa episodes after we did the Bella Lagosi episodes,
so she was in the in the mood as we
did our Halloween stuff. She, for the record, is in
the Spanish Dracula camp. We talked about in the Bella
episodes that they had simultaneously filmed a second version of
(31:19):
Dracula in Spanish at night after the main production would
rap for the day. And how there are some film
historians today who think that the Spanish version is actually
Abotter film. Apparently Jesse is in that camp. So thank
you so much for all of our listeners that send
us postcards. I do want to try to figure out
away time permitting, which is always the challenge, to get
some of these really beautiful ones up on our Facebook
(31:40):
page or elsewhere, just so people can also enjoy the
cool stuff that you guys are sending us. I love
it so much, so thank you. If you would like
to write to us, really, the best way to get
your stuff seen if you want us to address the
thing is via our email, which is history podcast. At
how stuff Works dot com. You can also connect with
us at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History at
missed in History on Twitter, missed in History dot tumbler
(32:03):
dot com, pinterest dot com slash missed in History. I
cannot wait to pin a bunch of Worth gowns. There
are already a bunch up there in our historic fashion board.
And you can also visit missed in History dot spreadshirt
dot com where you can get t shirts, bags, mugs
for your warm coffee that you will need this winter,
hoodies so will also keep you toasty, etcetera. Uh. If
(32:26):
you would like to learn a little bit related to
what we talked about today, if you go to our
parents site how Stuff Works, and you type in Charles
Worth's name in the search bar, you will get an
article called how French Traditions Work, and one page of
it does talk about fashion and how It mentioned briefly
how Charles Worth, even though he was originally an Englishman,
he really sort of associated himself with France for the
entirety of his career, so France sort of claims him
(32:48):
as their's and he's mentioned in that article. You can
also visit our history website missed in History dot com
if you would like to look at our entire archive
of episodes at show notes. Tracy has written a wonderful
blog post on how to find any back episodes if
you have a subject you're interested in and want to
know if we did it. We used to try to
(33:08):
search for things and and send them people's way when
they inquired about topics that we had already done. But
the volume of mail and Facebook notes about that is
getting to be a little bit more than we can
possibly humanly keep up with. So read Tracy's fabulous blog
posts and you will know how to do that yourself.
Uh And if you would like to learn about almost
anything your mind can contrary, you can do that at
(33:29):
our parent site, how stuff Works dot com, or visit
us at mr history dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Because it has to works
dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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