The Theatre of Fashion: Staging Haute Couture in Early 20th Century France

[D]oes not the sight of the dainty show girl instil [sic] in the women of every city and town the desire to be as well dressed and bewitching as her sister on the other side of the footlights?

On this hint does the theatrical manager act. He recognizes the drawing power of a half dozen beauties in Paris gowns and spares no expense to garb his chorus principals in the very newest and most chic. And, wisely again, he invites the fashion authorities to a private view of all the creations worn in his production, so that they may have the seal of expert as well as popular approval.

"Fashions on the Stage," Dry Goods Economist (May 23, 1903), 23.

In the modern period the connections between fashion and theatre are multiple, encompassing not simply the design of costumes for the stage, or the dramatic potential of fashion shows, or even the performative aspect of wearing clothes, but also the exploitation of the "star" system for the commercial purpose of launching new clothing styles. The familiar commodity tie-ins that in the 1930s enlisted Hollywood movie stars in the promotion of consumer products to female audiences of films were already operational, although in somewhat less sophisticated form, in the early twentieth-century French theatre of fashion that is the focus of the present essay. Indeed, a parallel exists between the advertising purpose behind the Hollywood movie industry's strategic positioning of domestic furnishings, kitchen implements, clothing, and cosmetics on the screen in close visual or narrative proximity to a star actress and the ubiquitous presence in early twentieth-century French theatre and fashion magazines of famous stage actresses featured in full-length portrait photographs accompanied in each case by a prominent caption identifying not only the actress and the title of the dramatic production in which she starred, but also the designer of the dress she wore and, in some instances, that couturier's business address as well (Figure 1). Without any clearcut evidence that these latter images were to be understood either as advertising on one hand or as visual support for editorial copy on the other, they functioned ambiguously, and perhaps for that reason especially effectively, to convey the impression that the stars were "endorsing their favourite couturiers' clothes and encouraging readers to follow suit." ¹ If in such circumstances the actress appeared to be making an independent decision about which clothes she chose to wear on stage, there were others in which her role was merely that of a mannequin, a living fashion model, in a dramatic production that amounted to little more than a convenient vehicle for promoting a couturier's commercial interests.

Charles Eckert has described how the star system functioned like a well-oiled machine in 1930s Hollywood, where commodity tie-ins were often formative influences on the development of a movie script, ² but something very close to this was already becoming commonplace in Paris theatres in the 1910s, when couturiers collaborated in the presentation of plays about couture houses, mannequins and dresses, recognizing these as ideal opportunities to parade their latest styles before audiences made up in large part of wealthy bourgeois women who were said to patronize the theatre simply because it satisfied their desire to see the latest styles modeled in a spectacular and therefore compelling context. According to Marie Monceau, reporting on French couture in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1912, "the theatres which have anything new to offer are well patronized, regardles [sic] of whether the play is a success or not. It is the dresses that are of vital interest." ³ Robert Forrest Wilson remarked some years later that providing the costumes for what he described as "Parisian society plays" was an expensive undertaking that required couturiers to offer special designs and discounted prices to the theatres, but the costs could be assigned to the advertising account, "for...