Paris Envy: Department Stores

Drugstores were one important outlet for moving smaller French merchandise, such as rouge, hair tonic, and perfumes, but the biggest boost for its largest export, fashion, came from the advent of department stores.  Again, France was the forerunner, opening its first department stores in Paris in the 1830s. The first American department stores opened in the 1870s.    "Department stores," argues historian William Leach, "pictured the desirable as did no other contemporary institution....They had little in common with the drab dry goods houses of the earlier period, which had been operated by pious Protestant merchant".
 
Leach is emphatic in his claim that the "American department store did more than any other institution to bring fashion to multitudes of people.  From the 1870s it tied the glamour of Paris, of aristocracy and nobility, and later the aura of the theatre and movie screen to the goods on display".  One of early designing stars to stock the store racks and shelves was the inimitable Coco Chanel.    Elizabeth Wilson finds that among Chanel's innovations, it was she who "adapted sports wear to women's dresses at the beginning of the twentieth century".   Daniel Hill notes that Chanel  "made jersey chic in simple little dresses that were unlike anything women had worn before.  Her knit pullovers and pleated skits were perfect for the working woman who had decided to keep her job after the war ended".  She offered the right thing, at the right time and American merchants had both the space and the drive to propel her to superstardom in this country.

While Chanel offered American women "forme et fonction," (form and function) a contemporary of Chanel's, designer Paul Poiret revolutionized color, giving American women "parure," this, perhaps, the most important element in ensuring French fashion success.   Poiret was happy to imbue American women with his own interpretation of the mystery of Parisian sensibility.  Poiret tried to make women believe that while they might own Parisian fashions, they could never hope to achieve French panache on their own.  Wilson recounts the story of how Paul Poiret, "on one of his triumphal tours of America...was asked, after a lecture, to advise individually the hundreds of enraptured women from the audience on the colours and styles each of them should wear.  As each woman filed past him, he looked hypnotically into her eyes and murmured a color he thought would harmonize - the Svengali of fashion".  Chanel's and Poiret's fashions were some of the early reasons why American department stores experienced explosive growth in the early twentieth century.
 
With a taste of the success French fashion could bring to them, the American owners of department stores such as Wanamakers, Gimbel's and Marshall-Field's were eager to learn more from the innovators of the genre, and they traveled to France to see what else they could emulate.   Harry Selfridge, working for Marshall-Field's, made several trips to Paris to study money-making department stores like Printemps and Bon Marché.  John Wanamaker also sent an emissary to Paris, a man named Harry Morgan.  Wanamaker's mandate to Morgan was that he discover some of the secrets of French department stores and bring them back to his own fledgling Philadelphia chain.  Morgan did not disappoint.  He delivered ideas from all the major Paris stores, including such innovations as "glass floors, linoleum plain with blue borders...spacious stairs... goods displayed...and lights everywhere, a plethora of lights".  Other innovations helped American owners move French goods in unexpected ways.  For the first time, inexpensive plate glass became available, and by the "mid-1890s, show windows became much stronger, larger, and perfectly clear.  By 1915 great banks of windows extended not only along the streets but beneath them as well, at subway stops in many major cities".
 
The display of French fashions in these new storefronts soon became the talk of the town, and storeowners were constantly trying to conjure up new ways to slow down the transient crowd that streamed past their windows.  One way proved to be through the display of innovative artwork.  Posters by renowned French artist Jules Cheret (called "le père de l'affiche moderne" "the father of modern poster art") appeared in the windows along with the newest styles ("Cheret").   His artwork continued the tradition of the French mystique, not depicting the product so much as the dream.  One observer of Cheret commented:   "Nous soupir pour les choses qui n'ont jamais été, jamais pouvons être et ne serions jamais excepté l'art".  "W sigh for things that have been, never can be and never would have been except for the art."   It was the dream, after all, that truly moved merchandise.

Department store CEO's quickly realized that the large crowds, elbowing one another for a closer look either at the fashions or the art, could be excited into buying even more if the displays outside were only a tantalizing taste of the wonders that awaited indoors.   The import of Parisian fashion shows soon became a runaway hit for American department stores.  In 1908, Gimbel's presented its show, the "Promenade des Toilette,"  and it was attended by thousands of women who "streamed into the Manhattan store to watch the models parade up and down the ramps in their fashionable Parisian costumes"  (Leach, Land 102).  The Parisian fashion show soon became a standard component of the department store offering, growing more and more elaborate as the years past, becoming "multimedia affairs with orchestras...and special effects".
 
There were not enough established occasions to give American department stores reasons for celebration, so the owners created their own, like Wanamaker's, who fabricated the holiday, "Fête de Paris".  Remembering the lesson that French mystique was also combined with exclusivity, Wanamaker's shrewdly issued an "exclusive invitation to one hundred socially prominent women".  These lucky few were treated to their own private fashion show, sumptuous cuisine, and of course, the opportunity to be the first to purchase the fashions they alone were privy to.  To say this was a spectacle is a considerable understatement.  William Leach explains that Wanamaker's Fête de Paris "red and gold setting (was) meant to suggest the court of Napoleon and Josephine".
 
On either side of the theater, Mary Wall, the show's impresario, had arrayed enormous picture frames trimmed in black velvet, with live mannequins in the latest Paris gowns posed inside.  At intervals spot-lights were directed to two of these models in tableux vivants as they stepped out of their frames.  Escorted by a child dressed as one of Napoleon's pages, the models strutted down the walkway into the audience to the sounds of soft organ music and Mary Wall's script describing the virtues of each costume.  The event concluded with a full-scale re-creation of the coronation of Napoleon and Josephine.

After hearing tales of such extravagance buzzing about Philadelphia, it should come as no surprise that (according to the store) "hundreds of thousands of women came to see the "Fête de Paris" after it opened to the general public. Wanamaker's was not the only department store to bring the allure of Paris inside its doors.  It seems that the owners were out to top one another, each trying to see who could out-Paris the other.  In 1911, Gimbel's proffering was the "Monte Carlo de Paris." Customers enjoyed casino games like blackjack and roulette while models adorned in the latest fashions from Paris "strolled down a promenade reaching all the way from the theater to the store's dining room, lined with thousands of seats (along the route) to accommodate the thousands of women from New York and the surrounding suburbs".  Clearly the spectacle and the marketing of Parisian fantasy were as much of a draw as the beautiful clothes.

Savvy managers and owners realized that their stores had to perpetuate the Paris mystique on days not devoted to elaborate "events" or fashion shows.  Many peppered their every day advertisements for the latest fashions with French phrases such as "offers merveilleuses, vente de blanc, en vente ici, ce qu'on doit savoir" or "choissesez maintenant". (marvelous offers, white sale, on sale here, what one must know, buy now)   In addition, French was the norm at the perfume and cosmetic counters.  There were other more tangible ways that the stores were able to keep the dream of Paris alive for their customers on a day-to-day basis.  For example, for its display of French lingerie, Wanamaker's created one of the first salon rooms.  The rooms, according to William Leach, were "actually prepared in Paris and shipped in tact". 

Stores tried very hard to construct a feeling of authenticity, and often resorted to elaborate permanent structures, like French gardens, and the re-creation of French landmarks to elicit a feeling of genuinely "being there."  "To buy a cap in a French garden, therefore" Leach argues, "was not appropriate only to the cap but to the exoticism injected into it by its setting".
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