page_title: Charvet Place Vendôme
section_title: International recognition
hierarchical_section_title: Charvet Place Vendôme / History / International recognition
caption_attribution_description: English: Cartoon in Men's Wear magazine about the announced importation by E. Charvet in Paris of clothing produced by Hirsh, Wickshire Company in Chicago.
context_page_description: Charvet Place Vendôme, pronounced, or simply Charvet, is a French high-end shirt maker and tailor located at 28 Place Vendôme in Paris. It designs, produces and sells bespoke and ready-to-wear shirts, neckties, blouses, pyjamas and suits, in the Paris store and internationally through luxury retailers.
  The world's first ever shirt shop, Charvet was founded in 1838. Since the 19th century, it has supplied bespoke shirts and haberdashery to kings, princes and heads of state. It has acquired an international reputation for the high quality of its products, the level of its service and the wide range of its designs and colors. Thanks to the renown of its ties, charvet has become a generic name for a certain type of silk fabric used for
context_section_description: In 1855 Charvet exhibited shirts and drawers at the Paris World's fair. The jury noted that Parisian shirt makers had an "unquestionable supremacy". Again, at the next Paris World's fair, Charvet exhibited shirts, drawers, vests and handkerchieves and the Jury noted luxury shirts were a Parisian "monopoly". When the  king-to-be Edward VII visited the fair, he ordered Parisian shirts, as many other foreign visitors did,  and remained a loyal customer of Charvet, "honoring him during forty years with a special kindness" (See List of Charvet customers). Charvet created for the prince of Wales a certain style of shirt collar, the stand-up turn-down collar, also referred to as the H.R.H. collar, which became very popular at the end of the 19th century (Figure, right).
  In 1863, Charvet was considered the first producer of fine shirts in Paris, claiming superiority "for taste and for elegance" on cuffs, bib and fit. Charvet's store was a "very important" destination for English visitors in Paris. In the following years, Charvet developed its specialization in royal trousseaux. In 1878, he won a silver medal at the World Fair and a gold medal at the 1889 Paris World's fair, for which the Eiffel tower was built. When it won the latter, the jury noted: "Fine shirts remain the property and glory of Paris. To be convinced of it, it is sufficient to give a look to the displays of the companies specialized in royal haberdashery". Other royal patrons confirmed this princely speciality of Charvet, such as Alfonso XII of Spain (1878), Antoine, duke of Montpensier (1879), Philippe, comte de Paris (1893), and sultan Abdul Hamid II (See List of Charvet customers).
  The clientele of Charvet also included artists such as Charles Baudelaire, who gave a metaphysical dimension to dandyism, George Sand, whose lover Alfred de Musset never succeeded to become a member of the Jockey Club, Édouard Manet, nicknamed the "dandy of painting" or Jacques Offenbach, composer of La Vie Parisienne. In 1893, when he tried to enter the Académie française, Verlaine had himself photographed wearing a "very beautiful Charvet scarf" (Figure, left). Allegedly, a gift of 100,000 francs to "the greatest poet of our time, Verlaine", was the stake of a bet between Edmond de Polignac and Robert de Montesquiou. Having lost the bet, Montesquiou "naturally kept the 100,000 francs but gave Verlaine a very beautiful scarf". Upon hearing the story, Polignac cut all relations with Montesquiou. Nevertheless, some other writers consider this story as a legend circulated by Montesquiou himself, as no document establishes the existence of this bet and Montesquiou was almost the only one in the elegant and cultured world to care for Verlaine.
  In 1894, an administrative report praised Charvet for constantly seeking high-novelty and setting the trend for other Parisian shirtmakers, having irreproachable manufacturing standards, and successfully enticing French factories to produce the raw materials traditionally supplied by England.
  After his 1897 portrait by Giovanni Boldini, Montesquiou's dandyism became famous and made him a frequent subject of caricatures. In 1903, a French satirical magazine illustrated by a caricature from Sem to which Marcel Proust alluded in a letter to Montesquiou, had Montesquiou saying: "Nobody in the world ever saw such things! Pinks, blues, lilacs, in silk, and in cobweb! Charvet is the greatest artist in the Creation." In a letter to Montesquiou, alludes to the caricature by Sem of Montesquiou examining products at Charvet (Figure, right).
  In 1905, Charvet, then also established in London, at 45 New Bond St, and "rumored" to be contemplating an establishment in New York,  was considered the "foremost haberdashery of Paris and London". Its customers included not only royalty, such as Alfonso XIII of Spain (warrant granted in 1913); Edward VIII, duke of Windsor; the French president Paul Deschanel, noted for his elegant Charvet cravats; but also members of the high society gravitating around dandies such as Robert de Montesquiou and Evander Berry Wall, or a
caption: Cartoon (1908) about the announced importation by E. Charvet of clothing produced in Chicago
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:04:12 13:15:49", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9650", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2180", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1760"}