Marchande de modes

Marchande de modes was a French Guild organisation for women fashion merchants or milliners, normally meaning ornaments for headdresses, hats and dresses, within the city of Paris, active from August 1776 until 1791.

Fashion merchants usually only worked on the ornamentation of clothing that had already been stitched together, although they could produce certain small items (such as belts, cravats, bows, shawls, capes, etc.).

Fashion merchants were the subject of much discussion in contemporary texts, including Louis Sébastien Mercier's Tableau de Paris, and the encyclopaedias of Diderot and Panckoucke.

They were regarded as an important figure of the age, as demonstrated by the variety of visual representations in the Galerie des modes et costumes français (a prominent fashion periodical), and in the paintings of François Boucher and Philibert-Louis Debucourt.

The hairstyle integrated a model of a French frigate named La Belle Poule which became famous after winning a naval battle against the English in 1778.

[citation needed] Bertin's dramatic rise to fame from relatively humble origins in Picardy to the inner circle of the Queen alarmed members of the aristocracy, including Marie-Antoinette's lady-in-waiting Madame Campan.

Campan believed that 'the mere admission of a milliner into the house of the Queen was followed by evil consequences to her Majesty' –namely, Marie-Antoinette's growing obsession with fashion.

The influential role of fashion merchants in disseminating new trends paved the way for the great designers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Charles Frederick Worth and Coco Chanel.