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It must be remembered that department store owners across the country were not working alone in keeping the myth of Paris alive for female American consumers.  The French continued to preach their superiority in all things aesthetic, but were especially vocal in advocating fashion.  It appears that many truly believed their rhetoric.  Designer Alexandre Arsène made no apologies for the expense of the clothing nor the grandiosity of the dream.  He declared, "Enfin, si Paris commençais à habiller moins bein la femme, il y aurait un peu moins de soliel d'amour sur la rest de la terre...nous avons fait dés catherdrals. Nous faisons es robes.  Que les autres en fassent autant.  Ils savent bien qu'ils ne le peuvant pas."   "Lastly, if Paris started to equip women less well, there would be a little less of the light of love on the rest of the earth...we create cathedrals.  We make dresses.  Others may try, but none do it quite so well..."
 
Arsène may have been responding to criticism he and others were receiving from some of their fellow countrymen who were not enthusiastic about the exporting of French sensibility to American shores.  In France, author Emile Zola penned his satiric novel, Au Bonheur Des Dames, a biting commentary against the women he perceived as empty-headed, flocking to department stores.   Other authors, like Georges Duhamel "held up American materialism as a beacon of mediocrity that threatened to eclipse French civilization, imposing worthless "besoins et appetites" (needs and appetites) on humanity at large.   The backlash against Americans taking over French culture became "something of a national hobby in France," according to Peter Stearns. These dissenters argued that "real Frenchness was hostile to mass consumerism on the grounds of inherent French taste and quality".  It is a familiar complaint:  nothing can be special if everyone has it.
 
The negative voices did not win out.  Cosmetics, perfumes, food, and especially fashion strengthened its hold on American imaginations and pocketbooks.  Newspapers, along with their paid advertisements, also helped keep the enthusiasm alive for Parisian fashion trends by featuring complete articles on the latest styles.  Front page stories often heralded the arrival of new lines from the fashion mecca.  Anne Price, a fashion editor writing in the early 1940s recalls the anticipation and dedication to reporting the latest fashion news:  "Those were the days when newspaper editors held the front page for the telephoned word from Paris on the height of the hemline and the status of the waists.  Elegantly clad fashion editors, hats askew, handbags flying, would race each other for the phone box with as much ruthless determination as their colleagues from the sports desk..."

"Of course," she continues, "fashion editors are competitive now, but...in those days we were reporting on one look, the look."  Women all over the world waited to be told whether they should chop two inches off their hemlines and that story on the front page actually sold
newspapers.  Mania like this led may have led existential novelist Albert Camus to claim in his work, Le Rebelle that "rien n'était aucun plus long bon ou mauvais, mais seulement prématuré ou démodé".  (nothing is good or bad any longer, but only remature or out-of-date).

The department stores, where all of these items were sold, were also responsible for launching a new type of celebrity into the American lexicon, the French designer.  Perhaps more than anyone, it was Christian Dior who propelled the designer to a god-like status.  He implicitly understood the dual purpose of fashion: to be functional, yes, but more importantly, to cloak the psyche in a beautiful dream.  For Dior, style came "venez d'un rêve et le rêve est une évasion de réalité". (from a dream and a dream is an escape from reality).  He coined his particular interpretation of the dream the "Nouveau Regard," the "New Look." Daniel Hill argues that Dior's "New Look" launched in 1947, "swept the fashion industry like nothing before - everything was important from head to toe:  hats and jewelry accentuated the face, long skirts framed the ankles, gloves and bracelets defined the hands.  Accessories and fabric manufacturers were ecstatic".  Dior's goal in creating the new look was to create an object of beauty, one that would stop people in their tracks, a vision that would cause the observer to exclaim, "Comme joli vous êtes aujourd'hui! Souvent voulant dire, comment votre chapeau vous convient!". (How pretty you are today!  Often wanting to say, how your hat suits you!).  "American fashions throughout the 1950s," argues Daniel Hill, "continued to be dominated by Paris couturiers and their enthusiasm for the New Look".

Dior was as much a businessman as he was a designer.  His marketing strategy virtually closed any opportunity for theft of his designs and ensured his dominance in the department stores.  Elizabeth Wilson finds that "Christian Dior...devised a system whereby his designs became almost a species of the franchise.  Overseas buyers could do one of three things.  They could buy a paper pattern of a model; they could buy a canvas copy, which when made with minor alterations might be labeled an "original Christian Dior copy" or they could buy the original, properly made up and sell copies of it with the label "Christian Dior".  Dior wanted to protect the integrity of his designs, for while he realized that "(l)a couture est avant tout un marriage entre la forme et le tissue" and acknowledged that it could be "beaucoup d'exquis" in the wrong hands, the union "mais on en cite de malherurex". (Fashion is a marriage between form and fabric; an exquisite union; but unfortunately sometimes unhappy).   Dior worked hard to see that none of his line met with any tristesse. (unhappiness)
 
The clothing itself may have been created in a state of blissful happiness, but that does not mean that all women were equally as pleased with Dior and his dominance of the fashion market.  Although most accounts recollecting the advent of the New Look offer only positive reflections of those years, Susan Faludi reveals that not everyone was worshipping at Dior's exquisitely shod feet.   There were thousands of women who very much enjoyed the more relaxed styles made popular by Coco Chanel, a look which gained an huge following among working women especially during the second World War.  These women were happy with their comfortable clothing and they were loathe to return to the restrictive styles that Dior mandated.  A group was formed to seriously protest the foisting of the New Look on American women.  Faludi reports that "more than three hundred thousand women joined the "Little Below the Knee Club" and when "Neiman-Marcus gave its annual fashion award to Dior, women stood outside waving placards" that read "DOWN WITH THE NEW LOOK".  Dior would not give in, and even taunted the protestors, predicting that, "Les femmes qui sont la volonté la plus forte bientôt portent les plus longues robes".  (The women who are loudest will soon be wearing the longest dresses).

Maybe not all women crumbled under the pressure of Dior but sufficient numbers of them did, and the New Look achieved market dominance.  Proof of the lasting impact of this style can be found in the fact fifteen years after it debuted, the New Look was still going strong, largely due to the influence of America's always-fashionable First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.  Jackie Kennedy continued to "sell" the New Look and even breathed new life into the style by frequently sporting her favorite pillbox hats, an essential component of the Dior ensemble.  Thousands of women wanted to emulate the stylish First Lady in every way and orders for Dior's designs continued to be strong.

Beginning in the early 1950s, some of Dior's dominance was beginning to be challenged.  Chanel came back into the picture in a big way.  She introduced a suit that helped redefine elegance.  In a 1953 Vogue interview, Chanel discussed why her new suit had enjoyed such terrific sales.  She told the reporter:  "Elegance in clothes means being able to move freely, to do anything with ease. Those heavy dresses that won't pack into aeroplane luggage, ridiculous.  All those boned and corseted bodices? Out with them...Now women go for simpler lives".  Other designers, like Hubert de Givenchy, followed Chanel's lead, easing American women "away from Dior's formality with mix and match cotton separates".  In 1960, Jean Patou scored an enormous hit with the marketing of tennis outfits for everyday wear, a look that included "pleated skirts, straight cardigans and vests or short sleeved blouses"  (Wilson 162).  French designer André Courregès issued a challenge to Dior's dominance when he  pioneered the first formal trouser suit for women in the 1960s (165).  Elizabeth Wilson argues that it was Courregès's design that made wearing pants in the workplace acceptable for women, thus opening the door to pants ultimately being deemed appropriate for almost any occasion in which a woman might want to wear them.
 
It seems that by the 1980s French dominance began to suffer somewhat in the American market.  Designer Christian LaCroix surmised that the problem was exactly what early decriers of the dissemination of French aesthetics had feared:  the "specialness" of French fashion no longer seemed very special.  LaCroix wanted to return French fashion to its sense of royalty.  His strategy, argues Susan Faludi, was to address "only the elite".  Working in conjunction with high-priced department stores like Neiman-Marcus, LaCroix convinced buyers to return to purchasing limited, select items that would only be available, and affordable, by very few women.  He convinced these high-end retailers to return to the elegance department stores had offered at the turn of the century, and many took his advice. The stores "sponsored black tie balls and provided afternoon tea service and high-priced facials to the idle few". 

The return to indulgences such as balls, teas, and facials enjoyed a good bit of success, but the same cannot be said for LaCroix's attempt at return fashion to the look of earlier, Victorian times.  Sales were terrible.  "All that embellishment, the ruffles, laces and frills," said a Sak's Fifth Avenue buyer of European designer imports, "women don't seem to want that much.  They want quiet, more realistic things.  They want clothes they can be taken seriously in.  I guess they don't like to look superfluous".

As they have repeatedly shown in for over a hundred years, the French understand how to adapt and stay relevant in a market that is not completely their own.  LaCroix gave up his over-the-top, outrageously priced designs.  Pierre Cardin and Yves St. Laurent created more realistic, more affordable, but still somewhat exclusive, designs. Brands like Esprit Jeans kept French designs in the minds, and on the bodies, of younger women in mid-range retail outlets.  In addition to fashion, Christian Dior and Givenchy "kept the French language spoken at retail counters throughout the 1970s and 1980s".  But when they saw that "American women were less enamored of unpronounceable foreign words" they "launched scents with names in English:  Dune by Dior, Envy by Givenchy, (and) Allure by Chanel". It is a strategy that continues to work, proven by the fact that most of us have at least one, if not many more, French labels in our closets and dresser drawers, rouge or perfume bearing the names "Lancôme" or "L'Oréal," at our dressing tables, Evian water in our refrigerators and Baker's chocolate in our pantries.  If we are especially fortunate, a Cartier diamond may grace our ring finger.

Photos courtesy of www.designmuseum.org

 With a strategy of innovation, adaptability, and the continual selling of a dream, there is no reason to think French products will not continue to be a part of the lives of American women for some time to come.

Photo Credit © Jorge Espel | Dreamstime.com

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".
Photo Credits © Michael Palis | Dreamstime.com © Simon Jeacle | Dreamstime.com © Darja Vorontsova | Dreamstime.com © Denis Tevekov | Dreamstime.com

While it is true that the French have never shied away from wooing the upper class demographic, their real conquest of American women lies not in the winning over of the privileged few, but by seducing the general public.  Again, marketing and advertising helped the French attract female American consumers. 

While women were studying the new fashion plates, dreaming about diamonds, or thinking about having some special chocolates delivered, they were also being courted into the new market of cosmetics, an affection which French women embraced but nineteenth century American women still had not accepted. 

Before French advertising began to proliferate American ladies' magazines, the only cosmetics used by "proper" ladies were cold cream and perhaps a little powder.  "Powder and paint," notes Elizabeth Wilson, " were associated with the ancièn regime and were therefore seen as unfitting for the daughters of the American Revolution; yet by the mid nineteenth century, it appears that Paris fashion were again being worn with heavy make-up, at least in New York City".  By the early 1920s, advertisements like ones created by the French cosmetic manufacturer Vivadou featured voluptuous women with heavily shaded lids and pursed red lips offered American women lipsticks, powders, and blushes as well as cold creams and perfumes.  The Victorian lady and the fresh-faced Gibson girl were soon overshadowed by the proliferate images Parisian femmes peintes. (painted women)
 
The desire to acquire all things Parisian extended from the top of the head to the tip of the toe.  Along with cosmetics, American women also applied Parisian hair tonics, like Pinaud's, which boasted in its American magazine advertisements its winning of the "Highest Award" at the Paris Expo in 1900.  In marketing such as this, we see the early attempts of marketer's attempts to "sell" the Parisian mystique.  Pinaud's "Eau de Quinine Hair Tonic made outlandish, un-provable claims that it "preserves hair from parasitic attacks; tones up the hair bulbs" and coupled those claims with an appeal to romance by lauding its "sweet and refined odor which makes it a luxury".
 
Whether fashions or cosmetics, the French message was that just a little bit of their products could not only work like magic, but also make you feel like royalty.

One way to get even closer to that feeling of being noble was to smell like them.  This myth was particularly successful because it was difficult to prove whether one did or did not have a royal scent about them.   Perfume was a terrific opportunity to promote the myth of nobility, accessible to the average woman.  Parisian marketers did not miss the opportunity to capitalize on the dream.  William Leach reports that in 1908, "a rumor was purposely broadcast throughout the trade that perfumes made and named for nobility exclusively" were "being sold in this country under numbers instead of names".  This particular myth was so enduring that even fourteen years later, in 1922, Coco Chanel was able to cash in on its power, creating her infamous scent, Chanel No. 5.   Chanel No. 5 remains, to this day, one of the world's top selling perfumes.

Chanel, of course, was not the only one successfully marketing French perfumes that implied that wearing a particular scent would do wonders for a woman.  Many advertisements for perfumes, initially with floral scents, "claimed a romanticized French connection".  They were selling the myth as much as the scent.  "In a 1901 advertisement for Delettrez perfumes, the poetic hymn to the "modest violets" of "the valley of the Var in sunny France" implied that only the unique flowers of this region were used," Daniel Hill points out.  This ad, and many others like it, claimed both beauty miracles and exclusivity.  The selling of the myth probably succeeded anyone's wildest expectations.  Sales for what Hill describes as "basically a static floral scent" rose from $17 million in 1914 to $60 million in 1919.
 
The French perfumers have never relinquished that sense of mystique.  It was quite a long time before anyone forgot Marliyn Monroe's famous claim that Chanel No. 5 was what she wore to bed.  In 1972, Audrey Hepburn was the spokeswoman for the French perfume, L'Interdit, and the text that accompanied her beautiful visage read, "Once she was the only woman in the world allowed to wear this perfume".  Fifty years after they first marketed perfume as an exlcusive royal luxury, the French found a new way to get American women to identify themselves with royalty, movie stars.

Before Monroe and Hepburn could sell perfumes or cosmetics, the French had to actually have a place to display the real products, and one important venue became American drugstores.    Kathy Peiss argues that "(l)a fabrication industrielle de produits de beauté destinés  à  la commercialization est issue de la convergence au milieu du  de plusieurs activités très différentes:  la fabrication des produits phamaceutiques et des fournitures pour drugstores, les initiatives prises au niveau local par les pharmaciens, et aussi l'essor des salons de beauté". "The industrial production of beauty products intended for commercialization results from the convergence of several very different activities: the mass production of beauty products intended for drugstores, initiatives taken at the local level by owners of the drugstores to sell beauty products, and also the rise of beauty parlors."  Drugstore owners were responsible for seeing that the products made it off the shelves and into the hands of American women.
 
American companies were quick to catch on to the appeal of French marketing.  One idea Pond's Cold Cream dreamed up to move product was to associate sun tanning with French elegance.  A 1929 ad proclaimed:  "It's smart to be suntanned!  The fad began out of the clear blue sky.  A Parisian élégante was told to bathe in the summer sun till she was brown as an Arab.  Along with radiant health she achieved an irresistible new beauty which forthwith became the fashion!".  Presumably, one was to copy the Parisian beauty in her sun-worship, but follow through with Pond's after sunning to moisturize.  Druggists were there to offer these wannabes their cold cream, and perhaps that new lipstick they had just read about, or maybe even that delightful new scent from Franςois Coty.  The advertising simply would not have succeeded had the French not had reliable American merchants willing and able to close the sales.

Photo Credit © Olga Ekaterincheva | Dreamstime.com

Perhaps part of the reason the French were so successful was their uncanny ability to market "image over substance".  Photography, developed in France, went a long way in convincing modern women that images were powerful, that the "look" could convey wealth and status.  Roland Barthes has commented that clothing serves three functions:  "protection, purdeur, et parure," (protection, decency, ornament) but that the third was taking over.   Writing in the mid-1940s, John Kenneth Galbraith agreed that fashion had become less about function and more about ornament.  He argues that, "For many women and some men, clothing has ceased to be related to protection from exposure and has become like plumage, almost exclusively erotic".

It should be acknowledged that French marketing at the turn of the twentieth century extended into many areas beyond clothing.  One of the ways French products infiltrated the lives of American women was through their kitchens.  Peter Sterns notes that the "idea of fine foods, (what the French call gastronomy) was led by the French".  The French were eager to impart their sensibility for food to American women.  Once again, advertising was the way the French succeeded.  Daniel Delis Hill argues that "of all the historical images used in advertising, the most prolific has been that of La Belle Chocolataière, which has appeared in the packaging and advertising of Baker's Chocolate since 1825" and is still on the packaging today.  La Belle Chocolataière is the image of a young aproned and behatted young lass, sweetly holding aloft a piece of her confection.   Even if a woman could not bake tempting treats herself, all was not lost.  "For those able to afford the expense," says Lori Ann Loeb, "nougat de fondants, Montelimart aux Pistaches...French fondants...bon-bons...dragèes and pasteils...could be delivered".  Of course, one could find out where to purchase these delicacies in magazines.

If an American woman was able to win her man's heart by way of his stomach, she might well find a Parisian diamond placed on her finger.  The gems were beautiful, true, but the real allure may have been in the marketing.  Advertisements for the Parisian Diamond Company perpetuated the myth of France to American consumers, promising them a "future where industry will have wedded art".  Purchasing a Parisian diamond, therefore, would give one a sense of something beyond the norm.  Not only women were the beneficiaries of Parisian jewelry; men could also be the recipients of a woman's largess.  A well-to-do American woman might find the advertisements for Cartier watches appealing and purchase one as a wedding gift for her new husband ("Cartier"). 

The French have long sought to market "class."  In her article, "Culture de masse et divisions socials:  Le cas de l'industrie americaine des cosmètique," Kathy Peiss claims that "(l)e marché de class corresspond à des produits coûteux, fabriqués dans le pays ou importés, et qui connotent des idées de distinction  et de stat social privlége".  Translated "Mass Culture and Social Divisions:  The Case of American Cosmetics Industry," Kathy Peiss claims that in America, "class corresponds to the ability to buy expensive products, whether manufactured in the country or imported; expensive products connotes ideas of distinction and social privilege." 
 

Photo Credits © Lullabi | Dreamstime.com © Mav888 | Dreamstime.com

"Avec notre goût, laissez-nous font la guerre sur l'Europe et par la mode conquérir le monde!" With our taste, let us make war on Europe and through fashion conquer the world!

Jean Baptiste Colbert, chief financial advisor to King Louis the XIV, made this emphatic declaration in the seventeenth century.  Little did he know how successful his proposition would be, nor how ubiquitous French marketing would become in the New World.  Today, the concepts and names associated with French products sold to American women are familiar parts of our everyday lives. 

Almost everyone knows that "haute couture" means "high fashion," and most are aware of the names of French designers like Christian Dior, Chanel, and Yves St. Laurent.   We buy millions of dollars of cosmetics and perfumes from names such as L'Oreal, Lancôme, and Clinique.   Our grocery stores are stocked with items like Yoplait yogurt and Evian water.  From clothing to beauty products, chocolate to diamonds, the myth of France has been sold, and we have been eager consumers.  The objective of this study is to trace the origins of this cultural hagiography and come to an understanding of why French products continue to be romanticized and marketed to American women who, for the most part, have never been and probably will never go to France.

 The presence of French products in the lives of American women is no accident.  France has been aggressively "sold" for over one hundred years, deliberately targeting American women through advertising in popular magazines, product availability in drugstores, and the phenomenon of Parisian fashion in department stores.   But to understand how this one nation came to hold such power, it is necessary to first examine the reasons why France was in such a unique position to export its sense of superiority, particularly in the realms of fashion and beauty.

The French sensibility for refinement has a history that existed long before they thought of exporting their "bon goût" (good taste) to America.   Perhaps one reason why the French ultimately became so successful in marketing to a wide consumer-base in the United States is because of their own national philosophy.  The French believed that all people could be fashionable and exhibit bon goût, not just royalty or the elite.  Both Marcel Proust and Honoré de Balzac penned descriptions of French society in the nineteenth century depicting both elite women and demi-mondaines (middle class women) as fashion leaders.   This shared sensibility can be traced back even further.  Elizabeth Wilson, in her superb study Adorned in Dreams:  Fashion and Modernity, claims that by 1690, there is evidence of a "fashionable peasantry".  Other historians offer support for this theory that claims a long relationship between the rich and not-so-rich.  For example, umbrellas, carried by Parisian royalty in the seventeenth century, also began popping up over the heads of commoners shortly after their introduction to nobility.  But it was the French Revolution that propelled the democracy of taste and fashion to new heights.  One woman, Madam Raymond Sée, even declared, "Les droits civiques de l'homme, l'aisance du corps our la femme, voilà les deux grandes conqûetes de la Révolution!".  "The rights of man, the comfort of female bodies, these are the two grand conquests of the Revolution!"
   
Clothing was not the only item to be democratized.  The French Revolution also saw workers demanding marchandises de nécessité principale (good of prime necessity) meaning sugar, soap and candles, items which, aside from candles, certainly would have been considered luxuries just a few years earlier.   In his study, Consumerism in World History, Peter Stearns argues that the French Revolution was when cosmetics and perfumes began to be used by all women, regardless of class.  "The French Revolution also generated its own (female) consumer items," he notes, "in the form of new materials, new clothing, fashions, and special hats".  All over France, women were beginning to indulge in corporeal pleasures.

Fashion and luxury items were spreading throughout France, from the courts to the countryside.  The French knew how to market and understood something about psychology.  In fashion magazines, advertisers began touting "nomination spéciale aux sovereigns de l'Europe," (special appointment to the sovereigns of Europe) giving the common people the sense that they could, in a sense, be royalty.    This appeal to "something higher" would prove to be especially successful in America, a country which simultaneously embraced both an "up by your bootstraps" mentality as well as a pretension to greatness.  This dichotomy of the American mindset, combined with the strong desire of the French to export their sensibility, are the abstract reasons behind France's ability to make inroads in marketing to women in the United States.

Two important concrete factors helped France gain that foothold:  the proliferation of magazines and the growth of international shipping and travel.  First, magazines were experiencing an explosion of circulation in America in the late 1800s.   French manufacturers recognized this and began buying space in American publications like Godey's Ladies' Book.  Godey's, and publications of a similar genre, were available across literally all over the country, "from the mansions of New York to those dwelling in farmsteads on the prairie".  Carrying forward the democratization of fashion for "tout le monde," (the whole world) Godey's "began to reproduce French styles in ways that would allow women of more modest means to sew their own copies and become paragons of an up-to-date look in their own right". 

It may seem curious that Parisian designers would let their designs be copied and recreated by anyone who could thread a needle.  However, the prêt-a-porter (ready-to-wear) market was still a few years off.  The impetus for the French at this point was not the sale of the design, but the sale of the materials to create it.  To be fashionable, Lori Ann Loeb argues, an American woman "required a wardrobe of beautiful and imported fabrics, one that included les dernières nouveautès from Paris, in the most recherché (latest styles) colors and...purchased from shops with fashionable addresses.  Fortunately for American women, the growth of international shipping and travel helped them realize their dreams.

 By the late 1800s, American women were so eager for the new French looks that Americans began traveling to France to "buy (or steal) the current trends".  These agents even acquired a French moniker, "modistes."  In 1888, the Paris fashions were so in demand that Godey's was forced to apologize to its readership for not publishing the fashion plates of the new season "because the modistes had returned from Paris late".  If one could not get the latest look from a magazine, there were also fashion dolls imported from France to "stimulate taste".  Women bought these dolls by the thousands.  Whether from the news rack or the toy shelf, it was France, not England, or Italy, nor any other country that substantially interested American women.  France alone captured the imagination.

Related articles to follow.
Paris Envy: Influential Marketing
Paris Envy: Cosmetics and Perfumes
Paris Envy: Department Stores
Paris Envy: Christian Dior

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