Samedi: The Art of Beauty

Over at "The Joyful Molly", Molly Joyful has been treating us to more and more eclectic fare. Once a site for all things Royal Navy, Molly is now exploring everything from Medieval land disputes to fashion. My hat is off to you there, girl. And thus, a link.

The above engraving is from a pamphlet entitled Gallery of Fashion, Month of November 1795 which fell into Molly's hands to everyone's - well - joy. More pictures and elaboration can be found at her post here. As we can see from this picture, though, England had a bit of a time pulling itself out of the old hard corsets and paniers era of the 1770s and moving into the classical inspired fashions known as Empire (not empire, by the way, which always sets my teeth on edge: it's pronounce om-PEER). Unlike Paris, which had that messy revolution to jolt it into nearly nude fashions, London stubbornly clung to billowing skirts and properly covered cleavage. No wonder a British sailor loved a stop in a French port of the late 18th century.

In fact the British, and the Americans outside of racy New Orleans, tended to like their Empire gowns with a bit more fabric than the French. A pity, I think, but no one was asking me.

All that said, those gloves are stunning.

Not in the mood for fashion? How about a little something else 18th century and French: magick. The Appendix blog has a wonderfully scholarly evaluation by professor Lisa Smith of a circa 1718, handwritten book entitled Recueille de diferents secrets (Collection of Different Secrets). Find it here and learn how to do everything from repel snakes to stop field fires. This incredible archive of folk-magic and religion proves that "The Enlightenment" hadn't quite taken hold the way Rousseau might have hoped.

And with that, I will leave you to your Samedi. Bonne chance ~

Mercredi: The Art of Beauty

Of course our mothers always told us that beauty is as beauty does meaning, as I understand it, that truly beautiful people are kind, humane and generous.  But we are not the only culture that has taken its beauty and fashion cues from people who may have been labeled by some in society - moralists, perhaps - as less than beautiful.  Consider, as an example, the high flying career of 19th century Parisian courtesan Cora Pearl.

Born Emma Elizabeth Crouch to a Plymouth, England music teacher of Irish ancestry and his seamstress wife, the future Cora Pearl was precocious from the start.  So much so in fact that, when her father left the family to find his fortune in the U.S., Mrs Crouch sent 12 year old Emma off to a convent school in Boulogne, France.  Though she never learned to speak the language with any elan, Emma got a taste for life in France and had no desire to leave it.  After returning to England and, according to her autobiography, being unceremoniously deflowered by a Covent Garden cad, she hooked up with a rich supporter who took her on holiday to Paris.  When her wealthy lover left, she stayed.

Changing her name to Cora Pearl ("more chic," she would later remark), she embarked on a path that would lead her to be a fashion icon for not only other demimondaines, but wealthy, respectable women as well.

Understanding that she needed to spend money to make money, Cora acquired a small wardrobe of the most beautiful and expensive kind.  Her gowns - all two of them at first - came from the famous couturier Frederick Worth.  She bought jewels as well; a sparkling topaz necklace with matching earrings and a set of coral bracelets.  Soon enough she would graduate to much more splendid decoration.

As the Comte de Maugny would later write, Cora had "plenty of system."  She knew how to draw attention to herself, and then encouraged men to vie for her affection by informing one lover of another's extravagant gifts.  This would bring yet more excess her way and so, as Joanna Richardson remarks in her fascinating book on the 19th century demimonde in Paris The Courtesans, the gifts would tumble into Cora's lap ad infinitum.

Soon enough, Cora Pearl was not only queen of the grande cocottes, she was the queen of Paris fashion.  Her caleche, which she drove herself on mandatory afternoon rides around the Bois de Bologne, was enameled in sky-blue with silver accents.  The interior upholstery was buttery, lemon-yellow satin and the horses - animals she probably loved more than any human - were four perfectly matched fillies, the color of cafe-au-lait.  According to Philibert Audebrand:

By unanimous consent she became, for twenty-five years, the prototype of the modern courtesan.  By 1852, Cora Pearl set the tone for that world of gallantry who eccentricities always ended by leaving their mark on the real world.

Cora owned a stable full of the best horses, three mansions and an endless supply of gowns, shoes and jewels.  She was remarked upon for her unique style, both about her person and her homes.  Her bathroom at 101 Rue de Chaillot, the mansion purchased for her by Prince Napoleon (Napoleon III's brother) was made entirely of pink marble with her initials in gold inlaid on floor and tub.  She gave lavish supper parties, strewing expensive flowers such as orchids on the even more expensive carpets.  Her language was sometimes coarse; her self-censoring switch seemed non-existent.

She wore the tightest corsets to accentuate what even her rivals noted as "the most perfect bust."  Over these she donned remarkable gowns, in colors that were not usually seen during the third Empire. La Vie Parisienne described one such in the 1860s:

A pink satin dress, with a kind of mauve gauze flounce on the hem of the skirt, over which was some blond-lace sprinkled with white bugles.  A gathered, decollete bodice, with two little mauve flounces all around.  A loose belt, with four mauve gauze streamers, sewn with pearls.

Unwilling to be second guessed on her fashion choices, she notoriously took a riding crop to a ten year old girl who laughed at her gown and pelisse in the Bois.  Richardson notes that "she was heavily fined for the offense."

Cora also introduced the use of modern makeup to the Parisian milieu and, yet more strikingly, hair dye.  Her naturally auburn locks could turn up any color on any given occasion.  La Vie reported that her hair had been dyed "the perfect mauve" to match the gown they described.  On other occasions, her locks were the same lemon-yellow as the satin upholstery of her caleche.

Her most extravagant wardrobe choices tended toward jewels, however, and for Cora diamonds were a girl's best friend.  Appearing in deshabille as Cupid on the Paris stage for a one-night-only performance that saw most if not all of her wealthy supporters attending, she quite literally dripped with diamonds if very little else.  At one point, Cora "threw herself flat on her back and flung her legs up in the air to show the soles of her shoes that were one mass of diamonds," according to William Osgood Field.  When she left the stage, Cora dropped another set of diamonds.  She left these where they lay, for her maid to pick up.

Of course the days of wine and roses could not last.  After an unfortunate scandal in which a young lover shot himself in her Rue de Chaillot home, she was exiled from the country.  Although she later returned, she never regained the elite status she had once known.  Cora Pearl published her autobiography in 1886 and died of intestinal cancer four months later.

Her legacy, however, contained both kinds of beauty, at least to some degree.  During the siege of Paris in 1870, she opened up her home as a hospital.  She nursed the wounded and dying herself and, as Richardson points out: "Her fine linen sheets were used for shrouds, and she herself paid all expenses."  More than a gesture, by any means.

Header: Cora Pearl photographed by Granger in the late 1850s via Fine Art America

Mercredi: The Art of Beauty

Though decried as an outrage to the female form since before the turn of the 20th century, I'm not the only one around who is fascinated by and just a bit nostalgic for the good old fashioned corset.  Corsets, far from being some sort of insane torture device applied slavishly on a daily basis, were a fundamental garment in the wardrobe of almost every woman in the western world by the 18th century.  As fashion historian Valerie Steele puts it in her book The Corset: A Cultural History:

Most people today tend to think of the corset as a waist-cincher.  Certainly, women could and did use corsets to "improve" a relatively undefined hip-waist ratio or to suppress a heavy abdomen.  However, the corset also functioned as a brassiere, indeed as a kind of Wonderbra, lifting the breasts, "augmenting their volume" and allowing them to "blossom in all their splendor and amplitude."

The points in quotations are from advertisements for corsets, mostly from the second half of the 19th century.  During this period the appearance of so called trade cards, like the one shown above, began a long and sometimes lugubrious tradition of playing up what the consumer wanted and making it look like something he, or in this case she, really needed.

Before the Industrial Revolution, corsets were made by hand.  In fact, the vast majority of women made their own corsets right along with all their family's other clothing.  With new technology - and new wealth - came the ability for manufactures to mass produce this basic item.  And with mass production came mass marketing.

The cards often focus on the health benefits of the corset being sold.  The card above shows that Ball Corsets are available not just to the ideal sized woman, but to everyone and their excellent fit is not sacrificed by this diversity.  Here is the young miss who can "breathe to live" in her first corset.  Meanwhile the nursing mother can enjoy the same comfort, accommodating her baby without having to abandon the benefits of a well fitted corset.

The idea of marriage and family appeared early and often in the corset trade cards, either overtly or in much more underhanded ways.  Marketing has always been marketing after all and, despite what Mad Men would have us believe, they didn't suddenly come up with "the hook" in the 1960s.

Cooley's Corsets featured a folding card that showed a distressed, frumpy woman on the front wearing a shapeless, gray-toned corset.  Looking into her mirror she bemoans "How uncomfortable I feel!  And how horrid I look!" (Yes, our ancestors were not above abusing exclamation points, either.)  When the card is folded out, our ugly duckling has become a swan.  Dressed in a gleaming white Cooley's Cork Corset, she can now say "I hardly know myself! How comfortable!"

An even less subtle card offers a cartoon and calls it "A true story of the Madam Warren Corset, illustrated in 4 Chapters."  In the center, of course, is our ideal lady, snug and curvy in her 1881 Madam Warren.  To her left is the "before" picture.  The young woman is shaped like a man with the exception of her dress' prominent bustle.  "Oh! How horrible I look in this old corset," she groans.  The next picture shows the same girl in her new Madam Warren: "What an improvement the Madam Warren corset and how comfortable."  The third square shows the lady out in public with a crowd of six men tipping their hats as they stare at her.  "How delightful to be admired by everybody," she gushes.  The final picture shows our happy lass at the altar, her Madam Warren now concealed by a white wedding gown.  "The happy result," reads the caption.

Corset trade cards of the same era often showed small children and especially the little angels known as putti.  As Steele notes:

Winged putti peek out from inside corsets, lace up corsets, paint or photograph corsets.  Since nineteenth-century doctors frequently warned that tight corsets could complicate pregnancy and injure the fetus, the putti may represent not only cupids or angels but also healthy babies.  At a time when many women experienced repeated pregnancies, they may also have hoped that a good corset would counteract the ravages of both pregnancies and time. 

One could hardly argue that modern ads for Victoria's Secret bras or Spanx tummy controlling underwear do any better job at grabbing women by their subconscious fears.  And with that, enough on corsets and advertising and the numerous shapes of the female body...  At least for now.

Header: Ball Corsets trade card via pastispresent.org