The Empire of Fashion and the Rise of Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France

In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, France — and more particularly Paris — became the universally recognized arbiter of fashion in the European world. Most observers have attributed the consolidation of French fashion leadership to the sartorial splendour of Louis XIV’s court at Versailles, which captured the imagination of aristocrats all over Europe and set off a tide of emulation.1 French fashion leadership certainly enhanced the glory of Louis and his court. But it increasingly became an important asset of the French economy as well. Louis-Antoine Caraccioli, an astute observer of fashionable society, wrote in 1777: There is no court in Europe where French fabrics are not à la mode. They flatter the vanity of the great, the frivolity of women; they shine on gala days. A dress that has not been fabricated in Lyon, a diamond that has not been mounted in Paris, a fan that was not made there, are insipid in the eyes of foreigners. They are embraced only when they are seen as samples of French genius.2