Fashion in the mirror of Eynard’s daguerreotypes

The contemporary treatises published on daguerreotype photography devote entire chapters to the choice of clothing, and our Genevan practitioner of the medium clearly applied their advice. Indeed, we see the great care he took in alternating dark and light hues, juxtaposing motifs and textures in the sitters’ attire, and arranging accessories in the space of the composition. Moreover, when it comes to emblematic pieces of clothing like the cashmere shawl for women or the dressing gown for men, Eynard was fully aware that he was playing on the symbolic and statutory messages they convey. In the absence of notes or other sources of information on this aspect of Eynard’s practice, we are reduced to making conjectures and carefully analyzing the works themselves.

The technique of portraiture

Many daguerreotype treatises furnish precise instructions on what should be worn in portrait photography. Clothing is a point that is addressed in the same way that lighting, how sitters should pose, and furniture are in order to ensure a successful daguerreotype, “The choice of clothing is not immaterial. Dark garments are the best. They set off the face and the latter stands out all the better for it.”[5]

The dark colors of men’s fashion in the 19^th century, notably the frock coat, the jacket and the overcoat, were well suited to the image this photographic technique normally yielded: “Men can keep their ordinary clothes, one should simply place before the breast a fake shirt of light blue fabric, because the white shirt is almost always solarized when the portrait is finished. The ladies will avoid wearing white or light colored dresses; a fabric of black silk or a dark color produces a very harmonious effect. Nevertheless, one should ban white in no uncertain terms; the sleeves placed in halftones, the lace or guipure artfully arranged, at times form very happy contrasts.”[6]

It is not known if Eynard indeed made use of powder blue “fakes” as is recommended above, but the fact is he demonstrates great know-how in his mastery of light hues. He seems quite up on the many recommendations lavished on readers of these treatises and applies them: “Finally, the best fabrics for women’s dresses are striped and checkered ones; because, in the fortuitous mixture of colors that they contain, the least photogenic colors appearing as halftones on the plate, the shape and folds are always well defined, without the effect ever being too light or too dark; if nonetheless one has used the recommended time.”[7]

Those checkered fabrics are often seen in Eynard’s portraits, not only in the dresses and stoles, but also in the men’s waistcoats, glimpsed in the opening of frocks and overcoats (DE 071), on trousers (84.XT.255.42 Jean-Gabriel Eynard wearing a waistcoat and a pair of trousers displaying very different check patterns; DE 036), and in children’s clothing, notably the boys’ Russian tunics usually sported by Gabriel and Féodor, Charles and Sophie’s sons, in their youth (DE 040; 2013 001 dag 003 and 2013 001 dag 052). This photogenic “fortuitous mixture of colors” is notably employed by Eynard in the mottled tablecloth covering a small pedestal table that appears in over fifty of his images. The moiré effects of dresses (worn by Sophie DE 037, and Anna 2013 001 dag 049) likewise stand out quite effectively.

The art of the pose: the tricks for looking natural

“It is easier to look natural when the head is held up by the hand; but in that case the proof must show everything or a majority of the body, and especially feature the object on which the elbow is resting. A small pedestal table covered with a patterned cloth and accoutered with objects connected with the profession of the person hits the mark quite nicely.”[8]

This graceful hand gesture holding up the chin, which is recommended for stabilizing the face and ensuring a “natural” look, is frequently seen with Anna and Sophie Eynard, as well as others, notably women, in Jean-Gabriel’s images (2013 001 dag 086). If we confine ourselves to the daguerreotype treatises, the gesture is part of the “tricks and dodges” for maintaining a pose. And yet the female subjects of painted portraits adopt an identical bearing, witness the society women whose likeness was captured by Ingres – Louise de Broglie, Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845),[9] Baronne James de Rothschild (1848),[10] Caroline Maille, Madame Gonse (1852)[11] – during the same years that Eynard was indulging his passion for photography. This gesture then is no mere “tic” of photographic portraiture but indeed belongs to the iconographic grammar of the “beautiful” portrait – we need only think of Liotard’s pastel rendering of Madame Lalive d’Epinay (1759)[12] for a Genevan precursor – while being part and parcel of the repertory of the bodily hexis (an originally Aristotelian term variously translated as “disposition,” “state,” or “active condition”) of upper-class women wielding the power of their image in society.

This science of the natural in the appearance of the female elite links up with the imperatives of fashion in the years 1830-1840, “The overall bearing must give the impression that the garment is detached from the effort it required… Furthermore, this period admired artifice and sartorial investment more than authentic beauty, and championed as the summit of fashion the natural aspect obtained through sham means.”[13] Balzac describes the meticulous preparation that the Princess de Cadignan goes to in readying her public self, a veritable mise en scène of her person, she who would like to look natural when visitors come calling. Numerous efforts are lavished on the dress, the complexion, and the expression: “She arrived early, so as to pose on a sofa near the fire beside Madame d’Espard, as she wished to be first seen: that is, in one of those attitudes in which science is concealed beneath an exquisite naturalness; a studied attitude, putting in relief the beautiful serpentine outline which, starting from the foot, rises gracefully to the hip, and continues with adorable curves to the shoulder, presenting, in fact, a profile of the whole body.”[14] The years leading up to the mid-19^th century offer a striking analogy between the discipline of the represented body in the mirror of literature and the visual arts on the one hand, and the injunctions touching on the decorum of social appearance on the other. As the 1868 manual of Countess Dash recommends, the “great merit of an attire is to seem natural and improvised when it has cost her who wears it, and those who have executed it, hours of study and preparation.”[15]

In his Treatise on Elegant Living, which he published in the review La Mode in 1830, Balzac insists that the two sexes in fact pay just as much attention to their appearance, “By reflecting on the whole set of serious questions comprising the science of dress, we have been struck by the generality of certain principles that govern in a way all lands, and the attire of men as well as that of women…”[16] That Jean-Gabriel Eynard enhanced his own silhouette with flattering poses, notably the raised crossed limb in the foreground, perfectly sheathed in the pant leg of a pair of stirrup trousers, like the gentlemen he himself photographed, evidences this attention to men’s appearance (84.XT.255.38; 2013 001 dag 037). The arrangement of buttons on the uniform worn by Aloys Diodati creates a V from the waist up that visually heightens the garment’s slender elegance, providing us with another token of the Balzacian principle (DE 074). Or consider Charles Diodati, his arm resting on a pedestal table (2013 001 dag 125). The satiny lining of the rolled up sleeve of his overcoat offers his right hand a sumptuous setting that lends it a pictorial value echoing the row of sculptures in the background – a sartorial detail that furnishes still another demonstration of the above. So, whether it is in Countess Dash’s instructions, or Balzac’s grave edicts on the “science of clothing” in social appearance, we are convinced we are reading the prescriptions for the subtle orchestration that a successful daguerreotype portrait demands.

Finally, this bodily hexis in representing the elite is absent from the way servants and peasants (cowherd, gardeners, day laborers for fieldwork) who worked for the family Eynard pose in his compositions (DE 019; 2013 001 dag 100 and 2013 001 dag 133). Their bodies are most often solidly anchored to some object or objects connected with their duties – washboards, buckets (84.XT.255.13), pots and pans, baskets, cowherder’s stick, wheelbarrow, axe, pitchforks and scythes – while an apron or coverall protects their clothes (2013 001 dag 084 and 2013 001 dag 099). When those tools and implements are missing, their hands, used to being constantly occupied, rest on their lap, at times uncomfortably so. Witness the magnificent double portrait of the cook Lisette Gilliard and the farmwoman Susette Cuenoud. The former is seated, her arms crossed at her waist, the latter standing, one forearm resting on the shoulder of her fellow worker while the other arm hangs loosely at her side, parallel with the vertical slats of what appears to be a high openwork fence or trellis at her back (84.XT.255.31).[17] This way of capturing these individuals with the emblems of their work mirrors both the relative social stability of the condition of servitude and a bearing constrained by physical labor (84.XT.255.13).

Reviewing details: the fashion worn by Jean-Gabriel Eynard and his circle of family and friends

As mentioned earlier, the Eynards and their circle were well aware of Parisian fashion, which dominated Europe, and England’s influence on men’s fashion. Comparison with contemporary texts and fashion prints makes this clear. The social conventions that obtained in matters of dress were likewise respected, with clothes adapted to every circumstance. In those diary notes recalling the photography session with Louis Philippe I on 18 June 1842, Jean-Gabriel Eynard twice points out that his wife and the other ladies have to change before dinner, “Someone having said that it would soon be five o’clock, all of the ladies hastened to take their leave and change, for the King likes to dine at six o’clock sharp. My dear Anna… was helping me to frame but the clock had just struck half past five. She still had to freshen up and change, and as I wanted my wife to have the time to pretty herself, I sent her away.”[18] Anna Eynard possessed a wardrobe that offered her the necessary rotation vis-à-vis her activities.

Differences in terms of the generation and status of the individuals appearing in the daguerreotypes can be read in the clothing, in keeping with the variations of fashion and the prevailing codes. The simplicity of dress that was expected of young girls before marriage throughout the 19^th century was followed in the Eynards’ set, “Everyone knows that, whatever the dowery of a young lady, her attire must always, in its form as in its ornaments, offer less refinement and brilliance than that of married ladies.”[19] Young women of marriageable age wore clothes that were simpler and less expensive than what could be seen on their married elders, who were allowed outfits made of precious fabrics like moire (that is, watered or moiré textiles) or covered with costly lace (2013 001 dag 106 Anna Eynard draped in a long lace shawl). As the French writer Émile Zola observes, when a client had genuine pieces of lace shown to her during the great display of white fabrics presented by the Au bonheur des dames department store, “the counter was soon covered with a fortune.”[20] Young ladies would sport at most a small lace collar. Likewise their hair would be done more simply and they would go without a head covering (84.XT.255.29 Amélie de Valcourt; DE 039 Hilda Eynard and Amélie de Traz), whereas married women would wear an indoor bonnet (Anna Eynard) or a veil tied behind their bun (Sophie Eynard), their head covering indicating both their status and age (2013 001 dag 039; DE 056).

The generational difference between the men in the circle photographed by Jean-Gabriel Eynard is shown by the photographer’s fidelity, in his own fashion choices, to a silhouette with a clearly emphasized waist, pointing downwards toward the belly and neatly exposed by the long knee-length frock coat, whereas his younger sons-in-law and friends have adopted the shorter, straighter and looser overcoat or jacket (DE 043 or DE 053). Eynard favored a cut of clothes that created a male silhouette with a “pinched waist, bulging torso and sloping shoulders, thin sinewy legs…”[21] which can be seen in the portrait that Horace Vernet painted of him in 1831.[22] On the other hand, all the males are still wearing trousers whose pant legs are more or less form fitting thanks to the tension of the under-strap, which lengthens and slims the leg. The frock coat prized by Eynard flatters even more this lengthening of the lower limbs (84.XT.255.38). He is often wearing a frock coat with velvet lapels, which would feature less frequently in later fashion, while his detachable collars, reaching to just under the chin (DE 027 and DE 029), are clearly much higher than what the younger men around him are wearing. These subtle variations underscore the generational differences within the same social class, whereas we generally tend to think that men all wore a kind of black uniform from the first third of the 19^th century on.

Men’s fashion

After the Ancient Régime’s luxury and lavishness, which persisted well into the First French Empire and elsewhere in Europe, the period of 1830 to 1840 presided over the discreet though irreversible advent of the black-garbed man wearing the austere suit of the rising bourgeoisie among the urban classes: “He wears gray trousers, houndstooth or checkered, a black frock coat, cut from the sturdy woolen fabrics coming out of the new English factories, of a quality meant to last albeit without any of the excesses of glamour. Goodbye to velvet and damask, and even kashmir [cashmere] from which the breeches and pantaloons of dandies were made. Fashion moved on to serge and occasionally tweed while the silhouette became fuller once again, as the daguerreotypes show us.”[23] The frock coat was the basic attire in the male wardrobe (2013 001 dag 027 and 2013 001 dag 030); very close fitting, it became looser over the years before coming into competition with the overcoat and the jacket, which appeared with a less constraining fashion and the rapid expansion of menswear in the 1850s (2013 001 dag 105). The majority of the men photographed by Eynard are wearing a pair of narrow-legged trousers (which were the fashion until around 1860) in fabrics that ranged over a number of styles, from light colored and plain, to checkered, striped, and houndstooth (2013 001 dag 049, Jean-Gabriel Eynard, standing on the right, sports a pair of checkered trousers that appears in many of the photos). These fabrics are mentioned by Balzac when he has Lucien de Rubempré, the provincial hero who tries to adopt the customs and costume of the beau monde, note that “well-dressed men wore charming fancy materials or immaculate white…”[24] These fancy materials – moleskin, cashmere and ribbed cashmere, nankeen and bazin (types of cotton), piqué waistcoat – are mentioned in fashion engravings from around 1830-1840, featuring motifs and textures similar to those prized by the men posing before Eynard’s lens.[25]

After the mid-19^th century, fashion gradually came to exclude from its field of interest men’s attire, which had grown darker and darker under the influence of the British suit and the dandy Beau Brummel.[26] “It is important that a man is felt to be well dressed without those who have seen him subsequently being able to recall any detail of what he was wearing. The fineness of the woolen cloth, the perfection of the cut, the quality of the tailoring, and most importantly how well all of this is worn add up to distinction.”[27] From then on, fashion would only celebrate women’s clothing, which was increasingly ornate and ample.

This dark suit of clothes, however, was enhanced by the waistcoat and the many accessories of the well-born man, including jewelry (rings, fob watch and chain hanging from the waistcoat pocket), tie, gloves, walking stick, and the indispensable hat, notably the top hat, which was not always black, not by a long shot, “…considered throughout the 19^th century as the height of distinction: men wore them for business as well as for leisure activities and ceremonies. [It] always served to magnify masculinity. It was like a crown that, moreover, lengthened the silhouette.”[28] In addition, the velvet or fur lapel of Eynard’s frock- and overcoats, “noble” materials that added a shimmery touch to the textures of his wardrobe, made known his distinction and wealth.[29]

Women’s fashion

Starting in the 1840s, women’s dresses comprised two parts, a closed boned bodice often ending in a point at the waist in the front, with low shoulders, and a skirt sustained by several layers of petticoats or a crinoline petticoat, which lent it a bell or dome shape (2013 001 dag 040; cm 01). A belt would sometimes emphasize the waist. A sunbonnet tightly framed the face and hid it completely in profile. The skirt would grow increasingly in volume until it attained its point of greatest expansion with the completely circular crinoline cage or hoop skirt during the Second Empire, while the armholes shifted up the shoulder and the sleeves flared downwards (DE 086; 2013 001 dag 051 and 2013 001 dag 062). Dresses with skirts boasting three to five layered flounces were wildly popular in the early years of the Second Empire,[30] “The fashion for skirts entirely covered in flounces began in 1846 more or less but became a full-blown craze around the years 1850-1854.”[31] The triple-flounce skirt stands out especially well on the seated figure at the center of a stereoscopic group portrait of friends and neighbors posing at Beaulieu (DE 048). This development can be seen in the change of the model of dress worn by Sophie Eynard between 1840 and 1850. In the portrait where she is posing with her husband, Charles (DE 035), her hair is separated by a part down the middle and gathered in a bun high up on the back of her head while her ears are covered by two masses of hair on the sides, a typical hairstyle in the 1840s which appears as well in contemporary portraits by Ingres, for instance his painting of Louise de Broglie, Comtesse d’Haussonville.[32] Here Sophie sports a ferronnière (a kind of ornamental headband) on her forehead. The armholes of her bodice are low and the sleeves puffed, the dress dome-shaped beneath her shawl. We can clearly see a long necklace chain from which dangles a châtelaine, the jewel that was emblematic of the married woman’s status which allowed her to have on hand all the essentials that the female head of the household might need (keys, a small pair of scissors, thimble, etc.). In a portrait with her husband and children dated 30 August 1851 (DE 037), Sophie is wearing a dress whose skirt is clearly fuller while the bodice sleeves are much more tightly fitted to her arms. Still parted down the middle, her hair now frames her face in long ringlets.

The portraits of Hilda regarding her marriage with Aloys Diodati (DE 074; DE 075) clearly emphasize her fob watch and the châtelaine attached at the waist at the end of a long chain necklace,[33] indicating her new status as a young wife. A token of great affluence, this piece of jewelry was worn by all the women in the Eynards’ circle (DE 035; DE 038). It is the female counterpart of the fob watch sported by the men but hanging from the end of a chain. Moreover, these accessories in precious metals added a bit of luster to the image, just like the rings and the buttons on a uniform (worn by Aloys DE 075;[34] or by students at the Saint Cyr school 84.XT.255.72).

Two emblematic articles of clothing: the cashmere shawl and the dressing gown

From the early years of the 19^th century on, two articles of clothing would prove immensely popular among the social elite, viz., the dressing gown for men and the cashmere shawl for women. True tokens of status, prestige, and affluence, they also took on meanings that were specific to each gender. Figuring in any wardrobe worthy of the name, these items would likewise permeate the iconography and literature of the day. It is no surprise then that they are a recurrent presence in the portraits taken by Jean-Gabriel Eynard (84.XT.255.44).

According to the great 19^th-century French lexicographer Pierre Larousse, “…the introduction of the shawl [in France] occasioned a genuine revolution in women’s dress… becoming the ultimate acknowledgement of female attire.”[35] Brought back in their baggage by soldiers who had fought in the Egyptian Campaign, the shawl woven from delicate cashmere and decorated with “Eastern” patterns provoked an unprecedented craze in Europe. Anna and Sophie are seen wearing real cashmere shawls decorated with palmettes (DE 041). Besides the specific prestige that went with the cashmere shawl, the frequency with which shawls and stoles made of precious fabrics (patterned silk, lace, wool) are seen draped over the shoulders of the women in the Eynards’ circle attests to their importance in ensuring women’s appearance in high society (fao 38107; IG 2003-293). While the cashmere shawl was widely imitated in less-expensive wool and introduced into more modest wardrobes, owning them in terms of number and variety, as well as the large size of these fabrics meant to be thrown over the shoulders, made clear the distinction between the social classes.

The dressing gown followed a similar trajectory, spreading from high to low on the social scale. It was initially an indoor garment of a social and intellectual elite, starting in the 17^th century. The output of writers and visual artists made it synonymous with the activity of the man of letters, an association that would last into the 19^th century.[36] The portraits of Jean-Gabriel Eynard seated at his writing desk wearing a dressing gown falls squarely into this tradition (DE 026; DE 025 standing with the Journal de Genève in hand). Once 19^th-century male dress had lost the ostentation of the preceding century, the dressing gown quickly became a refuge of color and invention for a man in his private world. Between 1830 and 1840, the prolific fashion illustrator Gavarni helped to make the dressing gown a way of life in its own right, not only thanks to his images, but also through the etiquette he forcefully conveyed with his own demonstrative use of this indoor article of clothing,[37] “The Goncourt brothers describe him putting on a show for them while visiting his property in Auteuil, ‘We find him impeccably dressed… He is all too happy to throw on, to show us it, a dressing gown made of fine cloth from India boasting a thousand stripes.’” Thanks in part to Gavarni, the dressing gown thus became a symbol of a new esthetic; but above all, it was less an article of clothing than a sign of belonging, a performative behavior. The Goncourts’ diary abounds in similar anecdotes touching on various well-known figures of the day who invited the two brothers into their private world.[38] The dressing gown now symbolized elegance, affluence, and success. How all strata of society adopted the robe, the peignoir, with its double aura of material and intellectual glory is nicely illustrated by the garment’s appearances in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. It indicates the success of a provincial notable, the notary Guillaumin, who receives Emma Bovary in his palm-leaf dressing gown and velvet cap; it symbolizes the aspirations of Léon (who later becomes Emma’s second lover) when he decides to go up to Paris to study law, “He would lead an artist’s life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have a dressing gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers!”[39] As the dressing gown became commonplace, here again it was the number of individual garments and their variety that set the elite off from the lower classes in their use of one and the same article of clothing. Eynard’s portraits attest that his wardrobe indeed held a grand selection of models that display great elegance and were cut from sumptuous bolts of cloth. He sports them by turns as a man of letters (DE 025 and DE 026), to receive his close friends at his home (2013 001 dag 123), in the double portraits with his wife (84.XT.255.18 showing Anna also wearing a quilted indoor jacket, 84.XT.255.44), and finally in an intimate portrait in which we see him – just this once won’t hurt – smiling in his wife’s company, his right arm affectionately resting on her shoulder (2013 001 dag 025).

Thus, this series of portraits of a Genevan family and their circle produced over the course of some fifteen years at mid-century mirrors the fashion customs and conventions that obtained within Geneva’s patrician class, the very same that 19^th-century etiquette imposed on all of Europe. Socio-cultural connotations played no small part in this. The photographic precision of the daguerreotype offers a forceful theatrical presence for fashion’s material elements, a presence that was perfectly wielded in order to balance and vary the compositions. It also reflects the way clothes visually mold and modify the body and the bearing sitters adopt and the poses they strike. In his art, Jean-Gabriel Eynard demonstrates he was able to skillfully interpret all the symbolic and pictorial registers offered by the clothing of his day in composing his daguerreotypes.

[1] Fanny Richomme, “Aux Abonnées,” Journal des Dames, September 1854, 25; see also Elizabeth Fischer, “De la toilette à la toile. Etre et paraître au XIXe siècle,” Modes et tableaux : oeuvres de la collection et costumes de 1700 aux années folles, ed. Catherine Lepdor and Elizabeth Fischer, Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, 2000, 23.

[2] Shoshana-Rose Marzel, L’Esprit du chiffon. Le vêtement dans le roman français du XIXe siècle, Bern, P. Lang, 2005, 60.

[3] Marzel, L’Esprit, 3.

[4] “Le daguerréotype du Roi,” from Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Notes journalières, quoted in Famille d’images : en visite chez Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Geneva, Musée d’art et d’histoire, 2001, 29. These pages are conserved in the Bibliothèque de Genève, Notes journalières 1831-1848, Ms. suppl. 1874, folios 622 to 627.

[5] E.T. and E. Montmirel, Le Daguerréotype mis à la portée de tout le monde, Paris, chez E. Montmirel, 1842, 60.

[6] Charles Chevalier, Nouvelles Instructions sur l’usage du daguerréotype, Paris, chez Baillière, 1841, 50-51.

[7] M.A. Gaudin, Traité pratique de photographie, exposé complet des procédés relatifs au daguerréotype, Paris, J.-J. Dubochet et C^e, 1844, 153-154.

[8] Gaudin, Traité, 155.

[9] The Frick Collection, New York.

[10] Private collection.

[11] The Musée Ingres, Montauban

[12] The Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva.

[13] Marzel, L’Esprit, 14-15.

[14] Honoré de Balzac, The Secrets of the Princess de Cadignan (1839), trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1344/1344-h/1344-h.htm – accessed 04.03.21). Quoted in Marzel, L’Esprit, 13-14.

[15] Comtesse Dash, Comment on fait son chemin dans le monde: code du savoir-vivre, Paris, 1868, 73, quoted by Philippe Perrot, Les Dessus et les Dessous de la bourgeoisie, Paris, Fayard, 1981, 242.

[16] Honoré de Balzac, Traité de la vie élégante (1830), Paris, Arléa, 1998, 79.

[17] B. Lowry, I. Barrett Lowry, The Silver Canvas: Daguerreotype Masterpieces from the J. Paul Getty Museum, London, Thames and Hudson, 1998, 148-149.

[18] Eynard, “Daguerréotype du Roi,” 30-31.

[19] Mme Celnart, Nouveau manuel complet de la bonne compagnie ou guide de la politesse et de la bienséance, Paris, Roret Libraire, 1863, 25, quoted in Perrot, Dessus, 185.

[20] Emile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, trans. Ernest Alfred Vizetelly (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54726/54726-h/54726-h.htm – accessed 06.03.2021).

[21] Catherine Ormen, Modes XIXe – XXe siècles, Paris, Hazan, 2000, 64.

[22] Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva.

[23] Dominique and François Gaulme, Les Habits du pouvoir. Une histoire politique du vêtement masculin, Paris, Flammarion, 2012, 162. See also Ormen, Modes, 64-71 and 118-127.

[24] Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions (1837) trans. Ellen Marriage (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13159/pg13159.html – accessed 07.03.21), Marzel, L’Esprit, 62.

[25] Fashion prints from 1834 to 1849 reproduced in Ormen, Modes, 68-71.

[26] François Boucher, Histoire du costume en Occident, Paris, Flammarion, 328 and 350; Marzel, L’Esprit, 67.

[27] Théophile Gautier, De la mode (1858), trans. Richard George Eliott (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17561310.2015.1038901 – accessed 08.03.21).

[28] Gaulme, Habits, 174.

[29] In his Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, Gustave Flaubert points out that velvet and fur are tokens of wealth and distinction.

[30] Ormen, Modes, 106-107; Boucher, Histoire, 340-345 and 357-364.

[31] Boucher, Histoire, 358.

[32] See note 9.

[33] This woman’s watch chain was called a léontine in French during the Second Empire.

[34] There exists some doubt as to Jean-Gabriel Eynard’s authorship of this portrait.

[35] Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, Paris, 1867, t. 3, 851, s.v. “cachemire.”

[36] Lise Schreier, “Portrait de l’artiste en robe de chambre, 1830-1870,” Romance Studies, 28, 4, November 2010.

[37] Farid Chenoune, Des Modes et des hommes. Deux siècles d’élégance masculine, Paris, Flammarion, 1993, 55.

[38] Edmond and Jules Goncourt, Journal, Paris, 2004, I, 480, quoted in Schreier, “Portrait,” 283.

[39] Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857), trans. Eleanor Marx-Aveling (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2413/2413-h/2413-h.htm – accessed 09.03.2021).