The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-03-24
THE LADIES' TAILOR.
He FIourished in France Over Three
Centuries Ago.

At least three centuries before the name
of Worth became n household word
among the female French votaries of
fashion the ladies tailor" as We now
term him, fourished in France. That
inveterate gossip and scandal-monger
Brantome, mentions him a familiar
purveyor to the court beauties during the
reigns of the last of the Valois, and the
first of the Bourbons; Nine de Sevigne
in letter dated November, 1876, gives an
elaborate description of gown made for
Nine. de Montespan by Langlee, the son
OF a chamber woman of Anne of Austria;
and upon the whole, there is a grave
doubt about women having borne any but
subordinate share in the production of
outer garments for their sisters. To be
absolutely correct, says the New York
Commercial Advertiser" there is no doubt
at ALL considering that it wanted nothing
less than royal edict to enable women
TO enter into anything like competition
with men in the manufacture of the upper
wearing apparel of their own sex.
The measure might have been DELAYED
for another century but for Louis XIV's
personal feeling in the matter, for COM
mon fairness had nothing to do with it.
During his long occupancy of the throne
Of France he looked upon himself and
required others to look upon him as little
less than divine, though like the gods
on Olympus, he could be as jealous as
the meanest mortal The first trait caused
him to dislike being handled and touched
by talIors while being measured and
htted for. his clothes; the second made
him even more reluctant to see the wo-
men he loved, or professed to love, sub
Jected TO the same ordeal especially after
a courtier who was present on one Of the
latter occasions. remarked that the tailor
thus operating was plus modiste que
modesto Consequently, notwithstand-
ing the opposition Of the tailors, he
granted letters patent to the seam
stresses to form themselves into a cor
pora on.
There were still many vexatious re-
strictiOns imposed upon them. For in
stance. they could not keep stock of
materials for their patronesses TO choose
from, the latter being obliged to furnish
their own stuffs. At the present time the
number of .'ready-made" gowns exported
from Paris TO all parts Of the civilized
| globe amounts to thousands, and the cap
| ital embarked in that trade is said to run
into millions Of francs. Up to the Revo-
luton these frocks had to be despatched
on the backs of life-siZed dolls or dummy
figures, the traffic being considered as a
business in dressed dolls" and in the
archives of the French Foreign Office
there is TO be seen an amusing CORE
| spondence between the Cabinets of Yer
sallles ana 81 James on the subject of
the ''safe-couduct' OF such lay figure,
| which was anxiously expected on the
banks of the Thames at the moment of
the outbreak of the Spanish war.
In spite of this cloRginR of fair trade
and hampering of individual liberty, there
| emerged from the ranks of the seam
| stresses a woman who, in the fashionable
world presided over by the Inflated Marie
| Antoinette. attained a degree OF celebri-
| ty and of whose self-sufficiency. assump-
tion-not to say presumption-and over
weening professional vanity many anus
| ing stories are told, although the Me
moirs'' she Is supposed to have left must
| be read with caution, inasmuch as 1t has
| been proved beyond doubt that the great
| er part of them are purely apocryphal
| The fame of Rose Berth was however
| eclipsed more than decade before her
death by Leroy, who, like Worth half
century subsequently, began his career
in partnership with a woman.
There was not a woman Of fashion in
Europe who. between the years 1s0i-20,
did not figure on the ledgers of Leroy
his most notable clients among the Eng
fish aristocracy being the Duchess of Wei
hngton, the Duchess of Deyonshire, Lady
Ailesbury, and Lady Waldegrave. Never
theless, the tailor-made dress, as We un-
derstand II, was not so much as dreamt
of. Even Worth, man Of genius In his
profession though he unqucstionably was
had no definite conception Of II until the
latter years of his at-one-time unchal-
lenged autocracy in the world of feminine
adornment The beauties of the Second
Empire, wandering through the gladcs of
Senart, and making the roads of Com
piegne resound with laughter, certainly
wore cloth jackets. tailor made, and cloth
skirts, festooned and looped UP over re-
splendent scarlet petticoats dist ended by
enormous crinolines, but there was not
what for lack of better term one must
call the unity of Design in their coo.
tunes. such as we know 1t today
There were no apparently rough home
spuns, no cunningly woven tweeds of de.
liberately conspicuous designs; there
were no signs Of any intended approach
to - inasculinity;" there was no eyidence
OF the tailor instead of the dressmaker
having presided at the conception and
execution Of those vestments. The
'taiior-made," in fact. was probably the
slow evolution OF the riding habit, and
although on the face OF II the fair sex is
| indebted for the former In its latest and
| perhaps. definite shape to England, there
| is somewhat striking collateral evidence
| that the germ of II did not spring from
an Englishmans brain. Enquiries in
variably lead to the discovery that in
some OF the best houses, both In London
and Paris: the principal cutters and fit
| tiers OF the 'tailor-made' gown are
| neither Frenchmen nor Englishmen but
| Germans and Poles. In the Paris strike
| which has not yet run its course. the
chief agttators and ringleaders belonged
| to those nationalities.