French fashion

The term prêt-à-porter was born in the 1960s, reacting against the traditional notions of fashion and garment-making process, satisfying the needs of pop culture and mass media.

[3][4] With the decentralization of the fashion industry, many cities including Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lille and Strasbourg have their own luxury districts and avenues.

The cities of Nice, Cannes and St. Tropez among others in the French riviera are well known as places of pleasure, annually hosting many media celebrities and personalities, potentates, and billionaires.

In the 1660s, representations of Louis evolved to depict him as a Roman emperor, the god Apollo, or Alexander the Great, as can be seen in many works of Charles Le Brun, such as sculpture, paintings, and the decor of major monuments.

Louis XIV notably introduced one of the most noticeable feature of the men's costume of the time: immense wigs of curled hair.

[13] A commonly held belief is that Louis XIV started to wear wigs due to balding, and to imitate this his courtiers put on false hair.

Most academics and scholars, have deemed her the quintessential representative of class conflict, western aristocracy and absolutism government in addition to being frivolous, superficial; and have attributed the start of the French Revolution.

This phrase originally appeared in Book VI of the first part (finished in 1767, published in 1782) of Rousseau's putative autobiographical work, Les Confessions: "Enfin je me rappelai le pis-aller d'une grande princesse à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" ("Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: 'Let them eat brioche'").

The Merveilleuses wore dresses and tunics modeled after the ancient Greeks and Romans, cut of light or even transparent linen and gauze.

Exotic and expensive scents fabricated by perfume houses like Parfums Lubin were worn as both for style and as indicators of social station.

Thérésa Tallien, known as "Our Lady of Thermidor", wore expensive rings on the toes of her bare feet and gold circlets on her legs.

[21] The leading Incroyable, Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras, was one of five Directors who ran the Republic of France and gave the period its name.

However, de Barras' reputation for immorality may have been a factor in his later overthrow, a coup that brought the French Consulate to power and paved the way for Napoleon Bonaparte.

[22] The first modern Parisian couturier house is generally considered the work of the Englishman Charles Frederick Worth, who dominated the industry from 1858 to 1895.

Instead of the usual pale-skinned, long-haired and full-bodied women preferred at the time, Chanel had a boyish figure, short cropped hair, and tanned skin.

From her excursions on water with the yachting world, she appropriated the clothing associated with nautical pursuits: the horizontal striped shirt, bell-bottom pants, crewneck sweaters, and espadrille shoes—all traditionally worn by sailors and fishermen.

In contrast to the stylish, liberated Parisienne, the Vichy regime promoted the model of the wife and mother, the robust, athletic young woman, a figure who was much more in line with the new political criteria.

The archives of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture were seized, mostly for their client lists as Jews were excluded from the fashion industry at this time.

Post-war fashion returned to prominence through Christian Dior's famous "New Look" in 1947: the collection contained dresses with tiny waists, majestic busts, and full skirts swelling out beneath small bodices, in a manner very similar to the style of the Belle Époque.

[25] Where else but in France would people describe themselves to potential partners in terms of their clothes?Post-war fashion returned to prominence through Christian Dior's famous "New Look" in 1947: the collection contained dresses with tiny waists, majestic busts, and full skirts swelling out beneath small bodices, in a manner very similar to the style of the Belle Époque.

[25] In the 1960s, "high fashion" came under criticism from France's youth culture (including the yé-yés) who were turning increasingly to London and to casual styles.

[28] In 1985, Caroline Rennolds Milbank wrote, "The most consistently celebrated and influential designer of the past twenty-five years, Yves Saint Laurent can be credited with both spurring the couture's rise from its sixties ashes and with finally rendering ready-to-wear reputable.

In post-1968 France, youth culture would continue to gravitate away from the "sociopolitically suspect" luxury clothing industry, preferring instead a more "hippy" look (termed baba cool in French).

[31] With a greater focus on marketing and manufacturing, new trends were established by Sonia Rykiel, Thierry Mugler, Claude Montana, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix in the 1970s and '80s.

Fashion is so important to the French that, as The New York Times in 1995 quoted in an article on users of online dating services on Minitel, "Where else but in France would people describe themselves to potential partners in terms of their clothes?

Nevertheless, many foreign designers still seek to make their careers in France: Karl Lagerfeld (German) at Chanel, John Galliano (British) and later, Raf Simons (Belgian) at Dior, Paulo Melim Andersson (Swedish) at Chloe, Stefano Pilati (Italian) at Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Jacobs (American) at Louis Vuitton, and Kenzo Takada (Japanese) and Alexander McQueen (English) at Givenchy (until 2001).

Numerous international fashion labels also operate shops in Paris, such as Valentino, Gucci, Loewe, Escada, Bottega Veneta, and Burberry, as well as an Abercrombie & Fitch flagship store which has become a main consumer attraction.

Paris hosts a fashion week twice a year, similar to other international centers such as Milan, London, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Rome.

The Rue Édouard-Herriot, the Avenue des Cordeliers Jacobines, the Place Bellecour among others, with elegant boutiques of Armani, Dior, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Calvin Klein, MaxMara, Sonia Rykiel, and Cartier.

For that reason, the fashion houses have taken advantage of establishing boutiques in ostentatious districts of the French riviera, Bordeaux is classified "City of Art and History".