CHAPTER SIX
Selling Natural Artifice
Entrepreneurs Redefine the Commerce of Cosmetics
The flurry of concern over cosmetics for aesthetic, moral, or medical reasons reinforced an ideal of beauty that mimicked nature through the use of only safe, healthy products for women and men, to a lesser extent. In this atmosphere, the attempts by cosmetics advertisers to market their products aggressively could be construed as an act of desperation, the last breaths of a soon to be defunct sector of the economy. Those who made a living selling cosmetics had to be the most adventurous entrepreneurs precisely because their products were under fire. The criticisms of cosmetics led to an all-out war, which retailers fought both on their own territory—in commerce and marketing—and in the spaces of their attackers. With marketing, they had the upper hand, as they were able to formulate the language of advertising and the representation of beauty to fit their interests. Like the doctors in advice manuals, philosophes in tracts, and social commentators in newspapers, cosmetics retailers in the pages of the affiches and other journals hoped to control the meaning of consumption and with it feminine beauty practices. These retailers, having created a structure and language of publicity, further supported the sale of their specific products by adopting and reformulating the arguments of their critics. The arguments against cosmetics were turned around and applied to prove their products’ worth. Rather than deny or ignore attacks against them, advertisers and promoters publicly used them to rehabilitate the tarnished reputation of artifice, asserting their position as the key taste masters of beauty.
Cosmetics were not the only luxuries to come under fire at the end of the eighteenth century. Changing fashions meant that many artisanal products lost their power over the hearts of Parisian coquettes as these women transformed themselves into respectable ladies. These luxury goods either disappeared from view or adapted to the changing circumstances of the market. Silk producers and merchants lost clientele when cotton became popular, never regaining the same hold over French fashions they had during the Old Regime. Wigmakers declined in number during the Revolution as their function became outdated. These trades were unable to fully adapt to changing fashions and were soon replaced by others, such as marchandes de mode and hairdressers.
The criticisms of artifice in advice manuals, journal articles, and tracts transformed the commerce of cosmetics as well. Rouge was to be replaced by vegetable coloring, white face paint by lotions, and chemical potions by scented waters. Women were to be the sole wearers of makeup. Sellers adopted these new definitions of beauty and, in some limited way, gender to remake the image of their old products, rather than actually create new ones. To do so, they reconstructed the representation and cultural function of these aristocratic luxuries. Cosmetics underwent an image conversion from suspect, unsafe goods that transformed women into immoral coquettes and men into petits maîtres, to pure, hygienic products that naturally enhanced beauty. Cosmetics advertisers based their marketing on the same ideals of science and aesthetic purity evoked by the critics of artifice, while ignoring the accusations of immorality.
Yet when these new discourses entered the marketplace, commerce altered their meaning. When sellers adopted Enlightenment discourses of transparency and nature, they helped rehabilitate their own trade while also linking femininity and beauty to the consumer market. Inventors applied for medical patents that promoted the sale of safe goods, allowing them to harness the power of scientific language and to distance themselves from accusations of charlatanism. Building on the new fashion of purity, advertisers manipulated the language of the natural to establish their products as aesthetically pleasing within the framework of Rousseau’s pastoral idyll. In the specific case of rouge, numerous entrepreneurs attempted to harness the language of the Enlightenment as well as the feminization of beauty and consumerism to gain a monopoly over the production of this highly profitable product, while also hoping to reinstate an aristocratic, hierarchical model of buying. In these three cases, sellers were acutely aware of the criticisms leveled at their goods. Their responses showed an ability to adapt quickly to changes in the world of fashion as well as an attempt (not always successful) to slow or even stop these changes.
Safe and Tested: Advertising Medical Legitimacy
Although medical patents were meant to protect the public from dangerous goods, they were fundamental in redefining cosmetics as acceptable consumer products. A patent’s inherent scientific declaration of safety allowed cosmetics sellers to use the language of science to market their goods. Savvy sellers of cosmetics featured their patents in advertisements, catering to both the public’s belief in science and, as one seller so rightly noted, the “capable doctors” who had analyzed the goods and honored them with “their approbation.”1 Upon reading the affiches, an educated public of buyers could thus identify the signs of respectability and safety that they had been taught to recognize by male medical professionals.
Sellers petitioned for patents for interconnected reasons. First, they needed a patent from the Société royale de médecine to get the approval of the Lieutenant de police to post advertisements. Although for most products the signature of the lieutenant was enough, goods that infringed on the medical world were referred to the physicians. In their letters of request, inventors made it clear that they wanted this permission to be able to spread their renown. Once acquired, the tacit permission allowed manufacturers to print publicity sheets and posters that could be legally distributed throughout Paris and the provinces. For instance, one seller of hair dye from Strasbourg printed four thousand leaflets describing his product, before he had been given legal approval.2 Others wanted an official copy of their permission to compete with neighboring stores that already posted publicity prominently on their storefronts.3 Still others used their permission to advertise in the many journals that contained announcements, such as the Affiches or the Mercure de France, though permissions were unnecessary for this form of free promotion. More than half of those who received patents used them in print advertisements before the Revolution.4 A considerable number of sellers quoted the text and date of the patent.5 Second, the right to publicize their wares had the added bonus of legitimating cosmetic products as medically safe in the public market. Those who petitioned for patents were savvy entrepreneurs who understood the cachet of an official stamp of approval. One petitioning couple stated that their secret recipe for rouge was useless without a patent because it was thus “deprived of the confidence of those who use it.”6 Sellers did not see the patent as a means of protecting their inventions (since few were original) but as a way of making quite common cosmetics seem safe, approved, and innovative.
The presentation of official patents in print helped legitimate and perpetuate a system of production that had broken away from the guilds.7 Despite their emphasis on the rights of guilds, neither the society nor the police made any formal checks into their petitioners’ backgrounds. Many owners of permissions were either not guild members or were overstepping corporate guidelines. Mercers asked for the right to make rouge, silk merchants the right to sell creams, and servants the right to sell hair powders of their own invention. Perfumers who advertised patents were just as likely to be selling medicines as cosmetics. The largest subgroup (31%) represented among these nonofficial producers were women, either widowed, single, or married, who based their demands on their respectability and family responsibilities.8 One daughter of a respectable bourgeois family of nine begged the commission for a patent for her father’s sake. Others used their status as the daughters or wives of the original inventors to make their petitions.9
For outsiders patents were a sign of acceptance, safety, and reliability. Even though the doctors who examined their recipes never claimed to judge effectiveness, patentees asserted that they had passed rigorous tests. Advertisers who had been given only tacit permissions claimed to have the “approbation” of the committee. M. Neuman stated that his eau de cologne was “approved for its superior quality.” Mme Josse claimed that doctors had analyzed her rouge before they gave their approval. Durochereau’s eau de cologne had “undergone the examination of the commission consultative des arts” to get its patent.10 By claiming approval, advertisers linked their claims of whitening, nourishing, and purifying to the medical professionals’ guarantee. A myth of efficiency as well as safety was created around their products.
Collin used his letter of patent from the Academy of Sciences as a means to combat attacks against rouge. His patent text was inserted at the back of Deshais-Gendron’s virulent attack on the injurious fards sold in Paris. Pasting an advertisement in this tract outlining the most gruesome diseases caused by rouge indicates savvy marketing by either a crafty publisher or by Collin.11 The same journals that publicized Lavoisier and the doctor Lefebvre’s tests of safe vegetable rouge also visibly advertised Collin’s rouge, implying that Collin may have had a role in spreading these studies.12 Collin cleverly associated his name with scientists’ concerns for women’s health. Mimicking medical articles on the dangers of artifice, he assured his readers that he “could not be more concerned with women’s health.” He acknowledged “censors, without doubt too severe, have risen up from all sides against the abuses of rouge.” Collin, however, felt that “women today know how to make good use of” his rouge in a way that would guarantee their safety.13 Science had proved that his buyers could ignore the critics of artifice.
The association of science and cosmetics was most blatant in the Avant coureur and the Journal de politique et de littérature, both edited by the conservative journalist lawyer Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet. Separated into categories such as science, commerce, arts, and literature, the Avant coureur included under science the subcategory “médecine-cosmétique,” coexisting with such prestigious titles as chemistry, physics, and geography. The Avant coureur solicited articles on new discoveries, “which can be an object of commerce or utility. This desire on our part should engage all those who would communicate their observations and their experiences.”14 Yet these claims were not investigated, allowing multiple “real” vegetable rouges to jostle one another for the attention of the public. Understandably, Linguet’s journals were popular spaces for manufacturers of cosmetics to publicize their patents and reinforce their uniqueness.15
Their presence alongside scientific discoveries enabled cosmetic advertisers not only to tout their approbation by the medical or scientific academies but also to give their products medical qualities. Maille asserted that the Royal Commission of Medicine applauded his Roman vinegar “for the conservation of the mouth and teeth … this vinegar is spirituous, penetrating, dehydrating, balsamic, and will fight against scurvy.”16 Another owner of a patent proclaimed that his product, a cosmetic cream, was aimed “for the healing of pockmarks and acne” among other diseases of the skin.17 Nonmedical practitioners employed scientific and medical language to ascribe to their goods veritable healing qualities, the very thing that physicians of the Society of Medicine tried to dissuade through censorship.18
Advertisers also used fear of charlatans, so present in the medical criticisms of cosmetics, to justify selling safer makeup. A revolutionary retailer assured his readers that “there is no lead monoxide (litharge), no iron in [his cream] by which charlatans trick women, destroying their health and yellowing their skin; on the contrary, it eradicates all these pernicious cosmetics in an instant.” Thus, this fard was not a fard at all but a healing product that worked against the dangers of real makeup. The advertisement finished by saying, “the only merit of the person who presents it is to have rendered it incorruptible and at a price all can afford.”19 For a reasonable price, one could purchase a safe cosmetic with the same properties but without the inconveniences as the artifice of previous years. A médecin chimiste promised that his “natural rouge” was colored water made with simples and flowers rather than vinegar or other noxious ingredients. The new cosmetics contained “no suspect or dangerous drugs.”20 Advertisers of cosmetics heartily acknowledged medical dangers and charlatanry, placing their goods in opposition to the chemical products sold secretively by others.
Advertisers who publicized patents or adopted medical language were acutely aware of the benefits of scientific approval and, more important, of the criticisms that their products attracted. They addressed directly the medical criticisms put to them and found useful support in the medical professionals’ faith in proof and verification. Producers used scientific discourses as the main criteria for judging their inventions in a market system based less on corporate standing than on marketing prowess. Cosmetics advertisers presented their patents as an assurance to the public that attacks against rouge and other cosmetics were not based on fact or, if they were, did not apply to their products. As science had been mobilized to prove that cosmetics were harmful, it was now employed to prove the innocuous nature of cosmetics sold on the market. The possibility of owning and advertising medical patents pushed the discussion of health and safety firmly into the sphere of marketing.
Rousseau’s Rouge: Advertising Natural Beauty
In adopting the language of medicine and promoting their patents, advertisers sought to discount not only fears of harmful products but also concerns with the aesthetic properties of makeup. By associating cosmetics with health, nature, and hygiene, advertisers adopted the pastoral image of femininity preached by Rousseau and other critics. Healthy cosmetics increased natural beauty rather than masking or destroying it. By adopting the aesthetic of the natural, those who sold cosmetics discredited accusations that their art was capable only of deceit, hideousness, and immorality. These advertisers asserted that their products were not part of the frenzied system of emulation and aristocratic debauchery but rather capable of transforming any woman into a pure, respectable beauty. The new style of makeup became representative of the transparency of the woman who chose to wear it.
Even as advertisers stressed the agreeable properties of their goods, evoking aristocratic luxury, they also stressed utility, a combination of values also espoused by the affiches. Utility could counter accusations of immorality, though no advertiser openly took on these criticisms. Instead, sellers focused on the need to improve oneself with products that were practical and ultimately highly effective in respectable social spheres. Maille’s rouge remained faithful through the heat of Parisian balls. He promised that his creation would not run throughout the evening and night. A 1768 article in the Avant coureur asked, “to how many different conditions are Maille’s vinegars applicable? It suffices to give the list to realize that he has made the best use of an already useful product.”21 Rouges, vinegars, creams, and powders were utilitarian and necessary tools for the social integration of all who wished to become respectable citizens.
To underline this sense of utility, advertisers stressed the hygienic value of their products and their distance from previous forms of makeup. One of the most desired effects for new cosmetics was salvaging damages done by paint. “Eau for the complexion” was meant to whiten the skin, soften it, and “to remove rouge and dissipate the noxious effect that it has on the skin.” As early as 1761, advertisers stated that their eau was safer than white face paint, making its use unnecessary. These eaux promised to restore the skin to its previous health and beauty, one seller calling his “of the virgin.” Advertisers also promoted pastes (usually made with almonds) that could wash away any traces of makeup. When used with water, these could promote healthier skin and one seller even sold a pink variety meant to stimulate color. A few sellers touted the ability of their soap to help men shave as well as assist women in washing away the effects of other cosmetics.22
White face paint was the most suspect cosmetic of all due to its noxious ingredients and ability to mask the wearer’s true self and had to be either redefined or, more profitably, replaced. Mme Josse sold a “white … that nourishes and conserves the skin” rather than harming it. One seller of a “baume blanc” promised that it was “not makeup, but a simple and natural remedy” while another’s contained “only vegetable matter.” Mlle Pissonet’s secret recipe for whitening cream did not contain “any type of white.” And, whitening creams could mimic nature: the rightly named Crème de beauté was “so perfect for the skin that is it impossible to notice that the beauty it gives comes from art.”23 Everything but actual face paint was touted in advertisements: vinegars, waters, oils, and spirits meant to whiten the face without the inconvenience of actual makeup. One inventor came up with a base to apply to the face before women of society put on their face paint. She assured her buyers that she had improved its consistency, making it easier to spread on the face.24 These sorts of products, associated with rejuvenating and whitening the skin, were the most common inventions advertised in the eighteenth century. There are very few actual advertisements for blanc (only seven found), not because women no longer wore it but because it was both too banal and too suspect to advertise aggressively. Instead, the substitute whiteners that saved women from the dangers of real makeup were touted as much more reasonable and attractive purchases.
Rouge also needed to be redefined, but, unlike face paint, its role as artifice remained central to its sale. To sell rouge in the second half of the eighteenth century was to market vegetable coloring that was safe but also beneficial for the skin. Rouge increasingly shifted away from powders and vinegars to rouge en pot, which used oils as their base and vegetable coloring as their tone. Verbs such as “nourish,” “appease,” and “conserve” referred to products that had previously been assumed to function only as masks. One seller advertised having not just different hues of rouge but different levels of hydration for those with oily or dry skin. Another advertiser admitted that women would be better off not wearing rouge at all since it was potentially harmful and unappealing. But because fashion dictated rosy cheeks, women should adopt “rouge water … made of natural ingredients, which, instead of altering the skin, nourishes and softens it … [giving it the] same tone that blood produces in people who have coloring.” And rouge helped “contribute to the upkeep of women’s complexions and conserve the freshness of youth.”25
Though they would alter the wearer’s color, these new forms of rouge were meant to enhance or create natural beauty rather than mask it. Josse advertised her rouge as more “agreeable to the eye than natural colors.” Maille assured women that his rouge conserved the skin and could also give it “colors more beautiful than those which blood can produce to trick the eye.” Grimod de la Reynière, the famous food critic, reinforced this claim by stating that only Maille’s red vinegar produced color like flesh, while his competitors’ vinegars left a purple tint that destroyed skin tissue.26 The presumptuous assertion that makeup could be more authentic than the real thing reinforced the importance of natural fashions.
One seller touted his rouge as a means of slowly giving up the habit. He argued that since his rouge could be wiped for subtle gradations of color; women who wished to stop using rouge but did not want to change their tone overnight could slowly habituate themselves and their viewers to this shift. This insert was one of the few to consider the problem of lack of natural color in women who, listening to critics, wished to do without makeup. It does not, however, imply that women should stop using rouge forever but only temporarily.27 By the 1790s, women who did not wish to break the color habit but wished to look natural could turn to newly invented liquid rouge, which was easier to apply than the thick pastes and powders, allowing for lighter color. Instructions for how to apply it stressed gentle brush strokes.28 This rouge could “soften the skin, give vivacity to the eye, the freshness of the first bloom of youth, without anyone being able to guess that one uses” it.29 Even more discrete rouge-vert, a precipitate of vegetable rouge that went from green to red, could be carried on small sheets of paper.30 Women should have fresh faces, but there was no harm in applying light colors if they did not come naturally. Tasteful and feminine, this style of wearing fard fit the new aesthetics.
Advertisements for rouge, more than any other, reinforced the newly defined feminine toilette. They openly acknowledged that women should care about their looks in the interest of the larger society. It was “contributing to the good of society in which women are the principal ornament … to discover the means of rendering them more agreeable in our eyes.”31 This was not the deceit of courtesans in the salons but the simple desire of women no longer in the bloom of youth to please their husbands and reaffirm their looks. Sellers of cosmetics, like scientists and doctors, believed in the biological imperative of vanity. All women, no matter their class or rank, had private and personal reasons for wanting to appear youthful, beautiful, and natural. Rouge and other cosmetics were the cheapest, easiest, and most reliable means of ensuring private and public successes.
Yet rehabilitating makeup did not simply limit women’s roles to passive wives dressed and made up to please their husbands. Advertisers asserted that their products could mimic nature and create true beauty, but, like doctors, they did not take on the issue of morality. They very rarely placed their products in a specific context, and, when they did, they were the public balls of respectable society. When dangerous behavior was mentioned, it was not gambling and prostitution, but too much sun and disease. Women were encouraged in their search for youth and beauty but not admonished for their spending or teased for their frivolous pastimes. Instead, advertisers implied that their goods were necessary for all women. Rouge was to be worn for nourishing color both in private and in public; it had a purpose in almost any home. By adopting the model of a natural and thus pure beauty, advertisers may have evoked the moral roles associated with these fashions, but they never articulated the social expectations of appropriate femininity.
It was the fashion press, which blossomed in the late 1790s, which made the association of natural cosmetics with respectable readers more obvious. The Journal des dames made clear that its readership was not the old and ugly (for whom the products mentioned were not appropriate) but the young and potentially pretty, if not naturally so.32 Despite acknowledging in other parts of the journal that makeup was out of fashion, the journal still promoted using rouge and other cosmetics. The Petit magasin des modes felt that their female readers had the knowledge to use beauty products without detection, thus allowing them to follow contemporary natural fashions described elsewhere in the journal.33
What was key to achieving respectable, youthful natural beauty was following the advice of the journal as to where and what to buy. The Journal des dames made fun of the growing number of advertisements in the affiches that lured buyers with false promises of new shipments and cheap prices.34 In contrast, it promoted its own consumer information as unbiased and representing safer, more effective and fashionable options. By 1815, the journal was selling a list of vetted cosmetics and perfumes.35 However, these promotions were likely paid for by gifts to the editor, Pierre de La Mésangère, who had a considerable stock of luxury clothing items upon his death. Since most readers did not know of this arrangement, they would have assumed that the stores mentioned in the journal stood for proper values and fashions.36 Other journals followed suit. The Observateur des modes announced new products, judging them by their medical approval and their utility to women.37 Overall, journals aimed at women promised readers (of the upper classes) natural beauty and safe havens from the fraud of the market. As providers of concrete beauty advice, early nineteenth-century women’s journals promoted makeup when bought from well-connected sellers.
These early nineteenth-century promotions of both natural beauty and respectable cosmetics occurred alongside the advent of the cult of paleness associated with the Romantics.38 An 1802 article in the Journal des dames argued that rouge’s demise was near. Women wanted to be pale, a style that would soon mean that, “a made-up woman will no longer be able to enter public gatherings.”39 The writer blamed rouge’s decline on the Revolution and concerns for health. And yet advertisements and articles in fashion journals continued to promote natural vegetable rouges.40 In 1811, a journalist compared the plastered paint of the Old Regime to the present when “rouge is liquid and one uses it with moderation.”41 By 1821, one commentator stated that the new use of rouge by “opulent classes” meant that it was no longer as ostentatiously displayed at court but hidden from view.42 Whether the fashion was pale faces or naturally ruddy complexions, the fashion press encouraged private makeup and other forms of cosmetics for women without fear of aesthetic or moral failing.
As Jennifer Jones has shown, late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century fashion magazines adopted the new naturalized taste and transformed it into a purely feminized and thus trivial fashion, no less expensive and changing as the previous aristocratic model.43 What articles in women’s journals postulated was the continued acceptance of cosmetics within a new framework: youthful natural beauty accentuated with rouge was a necessary part of social integration but attempts to cover the lines of aging were self-deceiving and frivolous and thus linked to the aesthetics of the Old Regime court. These journals were widely disseminated in Paris, and the provinces and were highly influential in determining feminine purchases.44 Advertisers knew that overt cosmetics were being critiqued in fashion journals, so they worded and positioned their texts to adopt the language of the new fashion. By paying for special mention or simply advertising in the journals, sellers connected themselves to the journals’ goal of enlightening female shoppers.
The rehabilitation of makeup was made possible by the buyers’ continued belief in daily miracles. A woman who felt the need for extra color, whether to please a husband, a lover, or herself, could turn to the less proscriptive tone of advertisements. They promised the ideals of safety, utility, and natural beauty. They provided an alternative but also complimented the other widely available discourses on cosmetics: the moralistic stances of philosophes, the all-knowing gaze of advice writers, and the paternalistic tone of medical practitioners. Women’s journals added to this alternative sphere by combining practical advice with consumer tips. They encouraged wearing makeup by respectable women, allowing their readers to set limits found elsewhere in the journal. The literature of the boudoir, whether fashion journal or even medical treatise, left enough leeway for the application of almost any cosmetic, leaving the moral lessons to other spaces.
Selling Femininity: Dreams of a National Rouge Industry
Though advertisers did not often deal with morality, social class, and even gender, another group of sellers hoping to profit from the popularity of rouge were less circumspect. Entrepreneurs who made requests to create monopolies for rouge very clearly hoped to associate with both the concerns for health and beauty and feminine respectability. The transformation of rouge from aristocratic color to “vegetable rouge” meant that numerous small-time producers, especially women, could profit from this uncontrolled product. This freedom frustrated traditional male entrepreneurs who advocated conservative policies: commercial monopolies and elite privilege. They hoped to profit from the popularity of rouge while slowing the boom in consumerism, asserting the right of the aristocracy or the elite to set the tone and control fashion. Though they failed to stop the widespread adoption of natural fashions or to interest the government in their protectionist policies, their attempts reinforced the use of rouge as a feminine necessity and underlined the market’s importance at the end of the eighteenth century.
The growing concerns with corrosive ingredients and the feminization of men who continued to wear rouge were used to justify entrepreneurial producers’ need for greater economic control. Because rouge was a highly profitable industry, these men hoped to harness its economic potential by appealing to the ideal of “natural” domestic femininity that could be protected by a monopoly. The widespread fears of artifice were evoked to argue for establishing official manufactures, which would regulate quality and price as well as produce a profit for the state. From 1778 to 1796, entrepreneurs hoping to gain control of rouge manufacturing made nine official petitions to the government.
The government was the first to call for curtailing rouge production due to concerns about dangerous products. In 1778, an edict outlined the means of suppressing the use of noxious ingredients, especially those found in rouge: “The large consumption of rouge and the profits which are made by it have spurred a number of individuals to produce it, but these makers not having the proper knowledge necessary to distinguish between the drugs and ingredients that have to be included, having tried too hard to find the least expensive methods, [they] produce many harmful rouges, so that those who wear them are victims of the deceitfulness and stinginess of their makers.” The edict set guidelines for the formation of a royal rouge factory to be run by four select families of producers picked for the quality and safety of their goods. It also set the size of jars and the price of four different varieties, ranging from three to thirty livres, prices that limited sales to the wealthy. Current retailers and rouge makers were given four months to rid themselves of all stock. This plan attempted to establish monopoly control over a product that lay outside corporate privileges, and the four manufacturers involved were quite likely the instigators.45
The edict was never implemented, and, in 1780, the debate was reopened in the press and in pamphlets. In its public presentation, a monopoly over rouge sales became not only a means of ensuring safety and regulating production but also a profitable means of regulating womanhood. The chevalier d’Elbée proposed a plan to create a national industry of rouge whose profits would go to the needy sisters of rich consumers: poor noble women and war widows.46 He estimated that France consumed two million jars of rouge a year and could count on respectable ladies to continue to wear cosmetics. He also proposed that the newly created corporation would set up warehouses in all the large cities of France and send out traveling salesmen throughout the countryside to promote rouge consumption.47 Elbée’s plan attempted to sway the government into giving him the monopoly because of his charitable impulses. In effect, the libertines, actresses, and aristocrats of Paris would subsidize their more unfortunate sisters; the practices of high society would pay for the ideals of domestic sufficiency represented by the respectable but impoverished rural nobility. Elbée did not condemn wearing rouge, but rather he hoped to increase it. Consumption, in whatever form it took, could be harnessed for positive results. From a feminine and potentially dangerous practice, shopping could be transformed into a productive, reformative act that linked together all women of France.
Elbée’s proposal for what was essentially a new guild was unpopular because of the increasing acceptance of greater market freedoms and opportunities for the talented. Under attack by the rouge makers of Paris, Elbée stoutly denied that he was interested in profit and maintained that the best rouge makers would find a place in his association, forcing the worst to look elsewhere for work. He accused other rouge makers of being principally “hairdressers, toilette sellers, hawkers, clerks, etc. As they have acquaintances in all the houses, it is easy for them to sway the servants in their favor; they have lawyers everywhere; and here is the pack that barks against my project. They say ‘An exclusive privilege! Goodbye liberty, goodbye industry.’ But should all be permitted to sell poison? That is what comes of the liberty to make rouge; should we let this situation continue?”48 Elbée portrayed the struggle as one pitting himself, upholder of helpless women, against the encroaching free market whose intimacy with the consumer unfairly skewed the outcome. To Elbée, servants and hairdressers were uncouth, profit-hungry charlatans, not concerned with the health and happiness of the ladies they served. In reality, as we have seen, most small rouge sellers were women who were kept out of other professions. By forming a national monopoly, Elbée hoped to enhance quality and ensure the safety of respectable female wearers, while cutting out working-class women from its profits.
Elbée’s proposal was much discussed in the press. Despite poking fun at Elbée’s serious tone, Linguet backed the plan in his Journal de politique. Even though Linguet had earlier published Lavoisier’s findings about the safety of rouge, by 1780, he had adopted the well-worn opinion that there were hidden perils in the free market of cosmetics. Not typically a supporter of monopolies, he backed Elbée’s plan because it concerned nonessential, frivolous goods that could prove harmful. He argued that rouge would no more lose its hold over women than tobacco and card playing would over men, making a monopoly highly profitable in the long run. Because of the popularity of rouge, the government needed to protect innocent women from the dangers lurking in street commerce.49
The feminization of the consumer made it easier for male entrepreneurs to propose a monopoly but did not bring them success. In 1780, the Sieur Montclav et compagnie offered the state 1,200,000 livres and a percentage of their sales for the exclusive privilege of making innocuous vegetable rouge. These artisans justified their demand by asserting that they were the true inventors of vegetable rouge, “which today is at the highest degree of perfection due to their studies of procedures.” Though this company promised to “reassure the public of all fears,” government bureaucrats ignored their request.50 In response, Montclav offered two million livres payment, and, when this enormous sum was turned down, made a last attempt to gain recognition by proposing to open a royal manufacture of rouge whose profits would be shared with the state.51 The company continued to make proposals for the next two years, never with any concrete results. In 1787, another group of rouge makers, arguing that they were the first and oldest makers of vegetable rouge approved by the Academy of Sciences, proposed a royal manufacture whose profits would also go to the state. They endorsed doctors’ findings who warned of hazardous chemical ingredients and criticized the mass proliferation of rouge sellers on every street corner. This group of four artisans hoped to destroy the present system of rouge sales that made possible both the fortunes of charlatans and the availability of luxuries meant for the elite to all but the poorest residents of Paris and other cities.52 The wealthy were to reclaim luxury from the prostitutes and charlatans who now controlled it.
Another player in the contest to control rouge was the highly visible Collin. Having gone bankrupt in 1786, Collin restarted his career as a rouge manufacturer. As an owner of a rouge patent and a supposedly thriving factory, he felt it was his right to participate in the government’s potential regulation, making at least four attempts to get the government’s ear. Collin’s plan, however, was not a monopoly for himself but rather control over other makers. He asked for the position of “rouge inspector,” which gave him the power to supervise other manufacturers and more important collect a tax. If his request was not granted, he threatened to move his factories to Germany and England, thus causing France to lose substantial export tariffs and jobs. Citing as his patrons the Marquis de Rubel and an archbishop, he also asked that his “laboratory” be named the Royal Manufacture of Rouge, a title that Catherine the Great had allegedly given him. Yet Collin swore that his own proposal supported free trade, unlike others who wished to monopolize the market. His belief in laissez-faire tied to a strong sense of French nationalism and mercantilism, made Collin a savvy manipulator of contemporary economic discourses. Unfortunately, he too was unsuccessful in persuading the government that rouge was a worthwhile concern, and his letters went unanswered.53
Requests for control over rouge production continued throughout the Revolution. Like other entrepreneurs of the period, the perfumer Guérin proposed to employ orphans (twenty or thirty of both sexes) to run his rouge factory, providing them with a pension when they reached adulthood. He argued that his rouge production “could only be advantageous to the Republic since it would reinvigorate a considerable branch of commerce which in the last few years has diminished abroad due to lack of means.”54 He wished to do all he could to help France stabilize its economy. The Ministry of the Interior, however, replied that it was too preoccupied with “objects linked to the prosperity of commerce … to stop and examine an industry which only profits luxury.” The state solely assisted industries that were beneficial to the larger well being of the nation and which could give to “the Republic the degree of splendor to which it aspires and that it will inevitably attain.” Nonetheless, Guérin was congratulated for his enthusiasm and encouraged to continue his good works.55
Other proposals were sent to the ministry, but all failed to elicit results. Forced to answer oft-repeated demands, government officials expressed their exasperation and annoyance. Though aristocrats and members of the royal family supported many of these proposals, none was seen as a potential solution for the financial woes of the Old Regime or the Republic. Hilton Root argues that the crown encouraged corporatism to stifle unregulated luxury trades.56 Steven Kaplan, however, shows that after August 1776, the crown promoted more competition within commerce while increasing government oversight and policing over the guilds for its own benefit.57 These proposals’ lack of success indicates that the market for rouge was not seen as a threat to the government, thus not necessitating more regulation. And, as the revolutionary government moved to abolish the guilds in April 1791, any projects for monopolies would have been frowned on.58
Though rouge was profitable, its critics and supporters alike defined it as an unimportant luxury product associated with feminine fashion. Ultimately, both those for and against regulation agreed that its manufacture and sale invoked mere frivolity. Elbée and others linked their proposals to fashion and feminine needs, hoping that this consumption could be seen as capable of providing charity for “young ladies of quality, orphans, and poor.”59 Though they failed to woo the government, the entrepreneurs’ portrayal of rouge as a beneficial, though feminine, luxury product that might elevate the standing of the poor and protect the health of the rich was a strong justification for its continued sale. The link of fashion goods and feminine frivolity was a widespread concern for those involved in their production. Jennifer Jones argues “male and female artisans resisted the feminization of ‘the agreeable art of clothing’” and tried unsuccessfully to associate themselves with beaux art rather than art utile.60 Yet in this case, most proposals by cosmetic producers immediately accepted the frivolity (and thus feminine nature) of their products, finding commercial clout in precisely this association.
What concerned these entrepreneurs more was the association of their luxury product with the wrong women and with the wrong producers. These inventors and entrepreneurs felt uncomfortable with the changes brought by the consumer revolution. Rouge was to be sold, as Elbée stated, not in bedrooms but in an open marketplace where it could be watched and controlled. As a necessary and increasingly important commodity, rouge had to be secured by the government for its feminine population, a group thought to consist of the middle and upper classes. Rouge was to be repackaged so that it might regain its position as a luxury item, outside the reach of prostitutes but within grasp of the respectable classes. Much like the doctors who hoped to control the toilette, these manufacturers hoped to gain an even more powerful position in regulating production and sales. To do so, entrepreneurs readily transformed the fear of deceit into a distrust of the working classes, represented by both the immoral women who wore rouge and the questionable female artisans who sold it.
These ideals, had they been implemented fully, would have circumscribed the market for rouge, reinforcing a hierarchy based on social standing and corporate manufacture. They would have tied the buying of rouge to elite and respectable women and erased the possibility for a larger customer base. The failure to implement monopoly plans allowed the already booming market to continue to grow unabated. Those who sold a hodgepodge of beauty products to the Paris working classes benefited from the lack of government interference, while larger enterprises strengthened their hold over an elite clientele by assuring them of their quality and prestige. Though the proposals for monopolies were triggered by conservative impulses, they upheld the concerns of health, reliability, and proper femininity common to Enlightenment critics and medical professionals alike, as well as the open market of cosmetics advertisers. By taking these arguments into the realm of the market, they asserted that commerce was essential to the definition of femininity as well as beauty.
Conclusion
Artisans and producers involved in the commerce of cosmetics had two choices at the end of the eighteenth century. Either they could go about their business as usual or they could adapt to changing times by placing advertisements, applying for medical patents, ensuring their clientele of the safety and naturalness of their “new” products, and promoting monopolies. Though many cosmetics retailers chose the first option, a growing number saw the profitability of altering their business practices to counter and answer the attacks of their numerous critics. These entrepreneurs were conscious of the debates occurring in the texts of journals, philosophical tracts, and medical advice manuals.61 Furthermore, they quickly learned how to adapt these debates to market their products as the smart consumer’s first choice.
The state’s institutionalization of a patent system for medicines in the 1770s, the ongoing dissolution of the guilds’ power, and the official view that cosmetics were unimportant and trivial commodities further spurred the counterattack by cosmetics retailers. The government’s promotion of laissez-faire policies meant that this battle for legitimacy was fought almost solely in the public arena of the market, putting all retailers on an even keel when it came to promotion and publicity. Many perfumers or retailers of cosmetics were able to benefit from this freedom and to adapt their goods to changing times. Savvy use of contemporary discourses complemented the free market. Advertisers who adopted medical language assuaged consumer fears. Those who adopted the language of the natural evoked pastoral beauties rather than artificial aristocratic ones. Entrepreneurs failed to establish rouge monopolies but did reinforce the representation of cosmetics as safe, domestic, and feminine products. Ultimately, those who marketed cosmetics created a sphere in which values of health, nature, and beauty went hand in hand with buying consumer goods. The aesthetics of nature became one with the aesthetics of natural art.
What advertisers did not address were the moral aspects of this new beauty, leaving women’s roles unspecified. When put alongside women’s fashion journals, their publicity took on a more specific, though never very strict, definition of femininity. Only when attempting to sway government bureaucrats did entrepreneurs openly take on the issue of appropriate female behavior. And many did so by associating cosmetics with the worlds of prostitutes and aristocrats, in opposition to a purer respectable womanhood that did not wear rouge. In this way and by attempting to gain privileges in a period of laxer economic control, they were out of step with changes in the larger market. Advertisers knew well that they could not ignore the changing ideals in their reconceptualization of the marketplace, but they did not want to limit or cordon off their customer base. References to natural beauty and medical safety were successful because of the association of luxury with the concerns of the French populous at large. At the end of the century, commercial success meant welcoming any buyer with money or credit, thus achieving the very mixing of classes so feared by Elbée. The small rouge pot, labeled as safe and natural, could now give the neighborhood laundress natural color as well as mark her entry into the paired worlds of consumerism and fashion.
By appropriating the very criticisms directed at their much-maligned products, advertisers were able irrevocably to alter the terms of the debate. They legitimated selling and purchasing cosmetics, as well as fixing beauty practices firmly in the sphere of commerce. Concerns about women’s behavior, looks, and toilettes revolved around commercial availability, pricing, reliability, scientific legitimacy, and consumer know-how. Women, taught to be good consumers, were to worry about which cosmetics to buy and from whom, rather than about their moral or aesthetic failings. By the end of the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century, the conversation had shifted from the salons to the stores, from private toilettes to public displays of consumption, and from the texts of moralists to those of doctors, perfumers, and fashion magazines.
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