Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Luxury and Revolution: Selling High-Status Garments in Revolutionary France

  • Chapter
Selling Textiles in the Long Eighteenth Century

  • 225 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter is part of a larger study of the evolution of semi-luxury and luxury markets during the French Revolution: my purpose is to investigate how they evolved from the eve of the French Revolution to the Empire and the Restoration period, from a royal court to an imperial court. According to French historiography, this period is a transitional one, between the pre-modern and modern eras.1 There is a lot more to investigate from an economic viewpoint, even if major works and a number of current projects already exist.2 For the moment, they mainly deal with agrarian questions, the crucial problem of subsistence, economy and trade in wartime, or the future of urban and peasant people. Luxury has been studied through intellectual history and moral economy, rather than through economic history or the material history of civilisation. How policy, political economy, revolution and luxury are connected has been analysed using literary sources, including speeches, reports (memoirs) and correspondence. A privileged debate dealt with how luxury evolved throughout the eighteenth century.3 Fashion has been approached first as discursive practice; conceptualising, as Kate Haulman wrote, material culture as a site of power struggles and contested meanings; fashion is used as a set of symbols.4 Therefore, luxury and semi-luxury markets during the Revolution, in their most practical meaning, have yet to be explored: where were markets located? which goods were traded? and who were the various actors — including traders, manufacturers or other entrepreneurs, and consumers?5

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. D. Woronoff (2004) ‘La Révolution: Un entre-deux que l’on veut ignorer’, in F. Monnier (ed.), Histoire institutionnelle, économique et financière: questions de méthode (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: Editions du CHEFF), pp. 81–9.

    Google Scholar 

  2. F. Crouzet (1964) ‘Wars, blockade, and economic change in Europe, 1792–1815’, Journal of Economic History, 24, 4, pp. 567–88

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. L. Bergeron (1978) Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à l’Empire (Paris: Mouton)

    Google Scholar 

  4. R. Monnier (1979) ‘L’évolution de l’industrie et le travail des femmes à Paris sous l’Empire’, Bulletin d’histoire économique et sociale de la Révolution française, pp. 47–60; R. Monnier (1981) Le Faubourg Saint-Antoine, 1789–1815 (Paris: Société des études robespierristes), chapter IV, ‘La crise de l’industrie de luxe’

    Google Scholar 

  5. H. Burstin (1983) Le faubourg Saint-Marcel à l’époque révolutionnaire. Structure économique et composition sociale (Paris: Bibliothèque d’Histoire révolutionnaire)

    Google Scholar 

  6. F. Hincker (1989) La Révolution française et l’économie: décollage ou catastrophe? (Paris: Nathan)

    Google Scholar 

  7. J.-P. Hirsch (1991) Les deux rêves du Commerce. Entreprise et institution dans la région lilloise (1780–1860) (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS); (1991) État, finances et économie pendant la Révolution française: colloque tenu à Bercy les 12, 13, 14 octobre 1989 (Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France)

    Google Scholar 

  8. G. Béaur, Ph. Minard and A. Laclau (eds.) (1997) Atlas de la Révolution française, t.10, Économie (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS)

    Google Scholar 

  9. H. Burstin (2001) ‘Une révolution à l’œuvre: le faubourg Saint-Marcel (1789–1794)’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 323, 1, pp. 216–19. The no. 352 (April–June 2008) of the Annales historiques de la Révolution française, ‘Les temps composés de l’économie’, presents a whole series of current works. Finally, Manuel Covo’s dissertation, ‘Free trade, colonial identities and revolutions in the Atlantic world. Between the United States and Santo Domingo (1778–1806)’, opens a welcome Atlantic perspective in French research.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. R. Galliani (1989) Rousseau, le luxe et l’idéologie nobiliaire: étude socio-historique (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, volume 268 of Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century)

    Google Scholar 

  11. M. Kwass (2000) Privilege and the politics of taxation in eighteenth-century France: Liberté, Égalité, Fiscalité (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

    Google Scholar 

  12. J. Shovlin (2006) The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism and the Origins of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), bibliography, pp. 237–56

    Google Scholar 

  13. K. Hauman (2011) The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), pp. 227–273 (notes)

    Google Scholar 

  14. M. Kwass (2013) ‘The global underground: smuggling, rebellion, and the origins of the French revolution’, in S. Desan, L. Hunt and W. Nelson (eds.), The French Revolution in Global Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  15. K. Haulman, The Politics of Fashion, p. 227, note 6. See L. Baumgarten (2002) What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press)

    Google Scholar 

  16. M. Zakim (2003) Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men’s Dress in the American Republic, 1760–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)

    Google Scholar 

  17. T.H. Breen (2004) The Marketplace of a Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

    Google Scholar 

  18. L.B. Aloise (2005) ‘“The scourge of fashion”: political economy and the politics of consumption in post-revolutionary America’, Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 3, 1, pp. 111–39

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. J. Styles and A. Vickery (eds.) (2006) Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700–1830 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press)

    Google Scholar 

  20. L. Auslander (2008) Cultural Revolutions: Everyday Life and Politics in Britain, North America, and France (Oxford: Berg).

    Google Scholar 

  21. French or English studies are scarce: (1989) Modes et Révolutions 1780–1804. Exposition, musée de la mode et du costume, Palais Galliéra, 8 février-7 mai 1989 (Paris: Editions Paris-Musées); R. Wrigley (2002) The Politics of Appearances. Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France (Oxford and New York: Berg)

    Google Scholar 

  22. C. Fairchilds (2000) ‘Fashion and freedom in the French revolution’, Continuity and Change, 15, 3, pp. 419–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Aileen Ribeiro, a specialist of the history of dress, studied the question, with an aesthetic viewpoint: (1988) Fashion in the French Revolution (London: B.T. Batsford); (1995) The Art of Dress. Fashion in England and France, 1750–1820 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  24. So did Anne Anninger: (1982) ‘Costumes of the convention: art as agent of social change in revolutionary France’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 30, 2, pp. 179–203.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Industrial dynamics in Paris were recently reconsidered: A. Guillerme (2007) La naissance de l’industrie à Paris. Entre sueurs et vapeurs: 1780–1930 (Seyssel: Champ Vallon)

    Google Scholar 

  26. T. Le Roux (2011) Le laboratoire des pollutions industrielles. Paris, 1770–1830 (Paris: Albin Michel)

    Google Scholar 

  27. D. Margairaz (2008) ‘Faire de Paris la capitale économique de la France’, in R. Monnier (ed.), ÀParis sous la Révolution. Nouvelles approches de la ville, Actes du colloque international de Paris, 17 et 18 octobre 2005 à l’Hôtel de Ville et à la Commission du Vieux Paris (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne), pp. 69–78; J.-F. Belhoste and D. Woronoff (2008) ‘Ateliers et manufactures: une réévaluation nécessaire’, in Ibid., pp. 79–91.

    Google Scholar 

  28. See above footnotes and E. Labrousse (1966) ‘Éléments d’un bilan économique. La croissance dans la guerre’, in Le Bilan du monde en 1815. Rapports. I: Grands thèmes, XIIe Congrès international des sciences historiques (Vienne, 29 août-5 septembre 1965) (Paris: Editions du CNRS), pp. 473–97

    Google Scholar 

  29. J.-C. Perrot (1978) ‘Voies nouvelles pour l’histoire économique de la révolution française’, in Voies nouvelles pour l’histoire de la Révolution française. Colloque Albert Mathiez-Georges Lefebvre, [Paris], 30 novembre–16 décembre 1974 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale), pp. 115–42

    Google Scholar 

  30. F.M. Crouzet (1989) ‘Les conséquences économiques de la Révolution française. Réflexions sur un débat’, Revue économique, 40, 6, pp. 1189–1203

    Google Scholar 

  31. D. Woronoff (1984) L’industrie sidérurgique en France pendant la Révolution et l’Empire (Paris: Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales).

    Google Scholar 

  32. G. Feyel (1995) ‘Négoce et presse provinciale en France au 18e siècle: méthodes et perspectives de recherches’, in F. Angiolini and D. Roche (eds.), Cultures et formations négociantes dans l’Europe moderne (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS), pp. 438–511; Idem (2003) ‘Presse et publicité en France (XVIIIe et XIXe siècles)’, Revue historique, CCCV, 4, pp. 837–68

    Google Scholar 

  33. A. Kleinert (1982) ‘La naissance d’une presse de mode à la veille de la révolution et l’essor du genre au XIXe siècle’, in P. Rétat (ed.), Le Journalisme d’ancien régime (Lyon: Presses universitaires, Centre d’études du XVIIIe siècle), pp. 189–97; Idem (2001) Le ‘journal des dames et des modes’ ou la conquête de l’Europe féminine (1797–1839) (Stuttgart: Thorbecke)

    Google Scholar 

  34. C. Thépaut-Cabasset (2010) L’Esprit des modes au Grand Siècle (Paris: Editions du CTHS).

    Google Scholar 

  35. See also R.B. Walker (1973) ‘Advertising in London Newspapers, 1650–1750’, Business History, XV, 1, pp. 112–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. E.S. Mackie (1997) Market à la Mode: Fashion, Commodity, and Gender in ‘The Tatler’ and ‘The Spectator’ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press)

    Google Scholar 

  37. C. Wischermann and E. Shore (eds.) (2000) Advertising and the European City. Historical Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate); K. Haulman, The Politics of Fashion, chapter 6: ‘Fashion and Nation’, pp. 181–216.

    Google Scholar 

  38. See endnote 5, and especially, for the French case: J.-M. Devocelle, ‘D’un costume politique à une politique du costume’, in Modes et Révolutions, pp. 83–103; A. Kleinert, ‘La mode, miroir de la Révolution française’, in ibid., pp. 59–81; D. Roche, ‘Apparences révolutionnaires ou révolution des apparences’, in ibid., pp. 105–27; and R. Wrigley’s book, already quoted. See also, in a strictly lexicographic perspective: J. Hellegouarc’h (1980) Vocabulaire de la mode féminine pendant la Révolution française: inventaire des termes employés du 21 juillet 1789 au 20 février 1793 dans le ‘Magasin des modes nouvelles françaises et anglaises’et dans le ‘Journal de la mode et du goût’: catalogue de madame Teillard (mars 1790-septembre 1794) (Nancy: CNRS Institut de la langue française).

    Google Scholar 

  39. J.-D. Augarde (1998) ‘Noël Gérard (1685–1736) et le Magasin Général à l’Hôtel Jabach’, in R. Fox and A. Turner (eds.), Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris. Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 169–88.

    Google Scholar 

  40. (1988) Les Architectes de la Liberté 1789–1799 (Paris: Gallimard). With what they proposed or realised, Etienne-Louis Boullée (1728–1799) et Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736–1806) became, in the 1780s, the leaders of ‘l’architecture parlante’, especially thought of for public building: ‘[...] Oui, je le crois, nos édifices, surtout les édifices publics, devraient être, en quelque façon, des poèmes. Les images qu’ils offrent à nos sens devraient exciter en nous des sentiments analogues à l’usage auquel ces édifices sont consacrés’, E.-L. Boullée (1968) Architecture. Essai sur l’art (Paris: Hermann); written before 1789, p. 73, quoted by D. del Pesco, ‘Entre projet et utopie: les écrits et la théorie architecturale 1789–1799’, in Les architectes de la liberté, op. cit., p. 334.

    Google Scholar 

  41. A. Montenach (2009) L’économie du quotidien. Espaces et pratiques du commerce alimentaire à Lyon au XVIIe siècle (Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble)

    Google Scholar 

  42. C. Zalc (2010) Melting Shops. Une histoire des commerçants étrangers en France (Paris: Perrin)

    Google Scholar 

  43. P. Sanders (2001) Histoire du marché noir, 1940–1946 (Paris: Perrin).

    Google Scholar 

  44. Some historians of art studied the question: Ph. Bordes (2007) ‘Les discours sur l’objet d’art de 1789 à 1804’, in M. Favreau and P. Michel (eds.), L’objet d’art en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle: de la création à l’imaginaire (Bordeaux: Les cahiers du centre François-Georges Pariset), pp. 219–29

    Google Scholar 

  45. A. Perrin-Khelissa (2006) ‘Présents et achats de porcelaines de Sèvres pour les Spinola ou comment les étrangers se fournissent à la Manufacture à la fin du XVIIIe siècle’, Sèvres. Revue de la Société des Amis du musée national de céramique, 15, pp. 59–70.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lyon 2, France

    Natacha Coquery (Professor of Early Modern History)

Authors
  1. Natacha Coquery
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Northampton, UK

    Jon Stobart (Professor of Social History) (Professor of Social History)

  2. Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp, Belgium

    Bruno Blondé (Professor of History) (Professor of History)

Copyright information

© 2014 Natacha Coquery

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Coquery, N. (2014). Luxury and Revolution: Selling High-Status Garments in Revolutionary France. In: Stobart, J., Blondé, B. (eds) Selling Textiles in the Long Eighteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137295217_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137295217_11

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45177-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-29521-7

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation