Worth reading

If you love beautiful garments, you will swoon over the confections in The House of Worth, 1858-1954: The Birth of Haute Couture. Certainly you might have swooned while corseted into one of the boned bodices and metal-hooped cage crinolines which supported the yards and yards of fabric and trim that comprised one of these dresses. But how sumptuous, how splendid, how breath-taking the result! Each garment shown in this richly-illustrated tome will have you marveling at its design and details. 

 

In addition to all this visual delight, the book presents the story of the Englishman Charles Frederick Worth who came to Paris as a young man in 1846 and by 1858 had established what would eventually become the famous House of Worth. It's also a fascinating look into the fashion life of royal and aristocratic ladies as well as those from the artistic and demi-mondaine worlds, beginning at the time of the extravagant Second Empire in France, when the Empress Eugénie became Worth's loyal client.

From the voluminously-skirted gowns of this era to the bustle-backed styles of the later 1800s, Worth's creativity and his love of opulence and ornamentation is magnificently demonstrated. His son, Jean-Philippe, entered the business as a designer, and I do admire some of these later turn-of-the century designs, executed after Charles Frederick had died in 1895.

 Looking at all these frilled, embroidered, bejeweled, lace-adorned silks and velvets, I could not help but muse on the woman that they presented and the woman that wore them, for they surely would shape both outward and inward concepts of the wearer. Such perfection, such utter femininity. But also, such artificiality, such discomfort!

One passage from the book especially stays in my mind. “The empress [Eugénie] was fond of an active lifestyle and liked to dress very simply when she was not engaged in public duties, often in a black skirt caught up over a red underskirt, worn with a loose-fitting shirt... It was wearing a similar outfit that she scaled the Mer de Glace glacier near Mont Blanc.” Can you imagine doing that in skirts!? It made me think of the famous quip about Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, that she did everything he did, but backwards and in heels.

 So it is easy to see how women embraced the flapper fashions of the Twenties. About one dress from 1924-27 the description concludes: “Dresses of this kind have no internal structure and rely entirely on the body to support them.” How wonderful that must have felt after all the tortuous shaping the body had previously been subjected to. But I have to admit that for ahh-inspiring beauty, these shapeless dresses, however artistically adorned, can't compete with those incredible clothes from decades before. Even the more lavish New Look styles with which the history of the House of Worth closes in 1954 pale in comparison. 

Yes, I am grateful I live in the age of knits and spandex and denim, and linen that is allowed to wrinkle. But The House of Worth will make you yearn, if only for a moment, to be swathed in a luscious silk, a froth of delicate lace at your bosom, embroidered blossoms entwining with pearls down the front, some ruching perhaps, and tassels and ribbons, the skirt spilling out gracefully about you. Just page through this wonderful book and let your imagination waltz away.