A Bejeweled Gilded Age Fad

A couture Worth gown as depicted on the cover of Harper’s Bazar magazine, in 1894. According to the Telegraph, Charles Frederick Worth was the “the Lincolnshire lad who became Queen Victoria's favourite couturier.” His fashions at his Paris, “House of Worth,” were favored by the wealthy heiresses, Duchesses and Princesses from around the world in the gilded age. Worth had died 3 years before this fad of dresses with jewel-encrusted, live tortoises chained to them was reported. One has to wonder what he would have made of the trend!

 

Living tortoises with their backs covered with jewels, attached by a gold chain to ladies dresses, are the rage in Paris. They cost about 16 pounds ($80). The society for the protection of animals is agitating the matter. —From the Morning Press, January 1898

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

More Criticism of McAllister’s Manners

Nathan Lane as Ward McAllister and Carrie Coon as the fictional Berth Russell in HBO’s “The Gilded Age”

Another small portion of a dismal review of 

Ward McAllister’s book, 

“Society as I Have Found It”

The Paris dressmaker Worth receives an extensive advertisement throughout the pages of “Society As I Have Found It.” The author’s “distinguished” friends– an adjective which he applies indiscriminately to all of his friends, but which is quite superfluous, since we are perfectly aware from his own admissions that he would avoid the acquaintance of anyone who was not distinguished– are invariably described as having been arrayed in magnificent Worth gowns at the entertainments recorded in his book. The impression which he thus endeavors to convey, that the ladies in the foremost ranks of New York society get their dresses from Worth, is likely to create a considerable impression among his feminine readers in the Western and Southern States, and to prove of much pecuniary value to the once famous faiseur in question. 

For there has been a very marked decrease in the latter’s formerly important transatlantic clientele since the American élégante have at length began to realize that his Vogue disappeared with the fall of the Empire, and to discover that his European customers are almost entirely restricted to the wives of Levantine bankers and to the princesses of the stage and of the demi-monde. No leader of fashion in either London, Vienna or St. Petersburg, nor indeed any Parisian élégante, would ever dream of confining the construction and design of her toilette to the somewhat heavy hands of the Gallicized Yorkshire man in the Rue de la Paix, whose questionable and inartistic taste betrays his north-country origin, and who invariably strives to conceal the vulgarity of his coupe by overloading his creations with parvenu magnificence.

Mr. McAllister's readers, especially those who hope to derive from its pages social experience and a knowledge of etiquette, would likewise do well to avoid following too closely “the forms of invitations used by Mr. McAllister.” It is possibly owing to his connection with trade that he has adopted the commercial method of abbreviating words, such as, for instance, “yrs.” for “yours.” Abbreviations infer that the writer does not regard the person whom he is addressing as worthy of the trouble involved by writing out the word in full, and are therefore discourteous.

More over, it is hardly good form to refer in a letter to a “polite” invitation, while the expression “pray present me most kindly to Mrs. I and believe me yours, etc.,” must surely be an Americanism pure and simple, and the use of which is restricted to Mr. McAllister's “swell” friends. For it is certainly never used in Mayfair or Pall Mall. All these lapses, not only of language, but also of ordinary breeding and education, appear trivial, however, when we come to the appalling confusion of pronouns, which he introduces in his attempts to show his readers how to write a note in the third person.

In conclusion, permit me to express the earnest hope that young America will not regard as a model of European fashions, nor Europe consider as an example of American fashion, this feeble imitation of the Calais– not the London– Beau Brummel, whose manners, breeding, education and form are like his Huguenot legs– “very, very groggy.” – By an Ex-Diplomatist in the New York Tribune, 1890 

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Profiles in Fashion— C.F. Worth

A Worth gown depicted on the cover of Harper’s Bazar, in 1894— According to the Telegraph, Charles Frederick Worth was the 

“the Lincolnshire lad who became Queen Victoria's favourite couturier.”

Charles Frederick Worth, the first couturier of this age, and whose death in Paris has been the subject of much remark the world over, was buried recently in the family vault in the village of Suresnes-sur-Seine. On the Wednesday previous a service for the dead was held in the French Protestant Church in the Avenue, de la Grande Armee, Paris. Mr. Worth came to Paris as a young man of 20, the son of a Lincolnshire solicitor, looking out for something to do in the costume way, he having been with Swan & Edgar in London for seven years, and with the sincere determination to carve out for himself an independent fortune. It is not true, as Le Temps rather cruelly suggests, that the youth was of so artistic a temperament that he found England out of harmony with his tastes and feelings, and naturally gravitated to the one city of light and beauty. Young Worth simply emigrated, took the first situation in Paris that looked promising (it was with Gagelins), and threw into his occupation all that AngloSaxon energy which in those days of lesser competition with his own countrymen would assure him ultimate success. 

The World’s Great Milliner

To be candid, Worth did indeed leave England at a disparately inartistic period. It was the days of high stocks for men, poke-bonnets for women and crooked-leg furniture with horsehair. Nothing could be more dreadful. But young Mr. Worth heeded these things not. He came to the city where many of his countrymen have since made their fortune at just the right epoch. “Miss Flora Mc Flimsey of Madison Square” and all her friends, who found in Broadway nothing good enough to wear, were coming over to Europe to learn how to dress and going to Paris for the latest fashions. Mr. Worth saw all this and knew where his fortune lay. Soon after he had learned his business he suggested certain enterprising movements in advance to the house in which he was employed. They hesitated and eventually declined to accept his suggestions, whereupon Mr. Worth left their employ and started a business for himself in the very same premises in the Rue de la Paix in which the business is conducted to-day. 

His life is a contradiction to the axiom that “small beginnings are the way to get on.” Mr. Worth founded a business that from its birth was able to compete with, if not outshine, all his competitors. At the time of his death the house was sending out 10,000 costumes a year, and with every prospect of more. His sons, MM. Jean and Gaston, have now the entire control of the concern, though until very recently Mr. Worth superintended all the details of purchase. In private life Mr. Worth was almost a recluse. He married early a French lady, settled down in a small villa at Suresnes, adjoining the railway station, and used the daily train to go to his business. This villa soon became too small. He added to it ground and thereon built additions; then more ground and more buildings. He had reached from the main road to a public footpath and progress was arrested. Not for long. 

Over the footpath he threw an arch, on the arch continued his building, bought enough land on the other side the path for all his stables, greenhouses and vegetable gardens and another villa and grounds for one of his sons, so that to-day this conglomerate mass of buildings in a dozen styles of architecture forms the immense Chateau Worth, embracing several acres of exquisite grounds. The interiors of the buildings are like the exterior, full of surprises. Staircases greet you everywhere, as the houses are grouped all on the side of a steep hill, and the levels have to be met by stairways. The ceilings are low or high, just as it happens, but all adding to its picturesqueness. The walls are covered with ceramic decorations: plates and pieces of ware of Nantes, of Nevers, of Rouen, of Niderviller, Strassbonrg, Blois, Moustiers, Limoges, Marseilles, Sceaux, Tours, and especially old Quimper grouped there by the hundred. A most interesting place, but little known to the outside world. 

Some years ago I asked Mr. Worth to allow me to photograph his grounds and give a published description of his home. He replied most modestly and firmly : “I am a business man and shall always remain one. Were I to accede to your wish I might pose as something else, and this I have no wish to do.” Charitable in a large way locally, for at Suresnes he was to the poor most bountiful and to a few other charities, he never identified himself with the English colony of Paris, was rarely seen in public, except at the village celebrations of Suresnes, where he was greatly beloved, and on which occasions his purse was always  open. Among commercial men of the nineteenth century few, if any, have known so steady a rise to prosperity entirely through their own industry, perseverance and intelligence as the late Charles Frederick Worth.— Queen, 1895

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia©️ Etiquette Encyclopedia