The beaux of the day were not only bent on looking badly groomed, they tried to make themselves look older. Taking little steps, with their shoulders bent and their chest drawn in, enormous spectacles astride their nose and hiding half their face, they ended by looking like their own grandfathers* The ideal of these pretended victims of short sight and decrepitude was the exact opposite of the eighteenth century. Thanks to powder, wigs and the elegance of their clothes, the contemporaries of the Marechal de Richelieu could maintain the appearance of a juvenile lead well into the sixties. Henceforth, to be elegant one must look twice one's age.
Another important principle was to take no notice of the season or the weather. Was it raining? Were the streets muddy? The Incroydble would be seen walking in white stockings. Was it the middle of summer? He would keep to his boots, his heavy cloth coat and two or three waistcoats, which he wore one on top of another., like Moliere's false marquis.
Fashion was ruled by incoherence. Headgear of every size, spencers copied from women's wear, box coats with triple collars that looked as if intended for cab-drivers, all this pretended to elegance, as the jazz band, in the twentieth century, pretends to musicality: then as now a studious disorder, a taste for discord and a great expense of effort to achieve a painful result.
The worst eccentricities could, however, be combined with the cult of Greco-Roman traditions. When the Incroyable visited his hairdresser, this artist would draw his attention to a number of little busts grouped together in his saloon, and then 3 after a moment's meditation, would ejaculate in inspired accents, 'I see what you need. A mixture of Titus, Caracalla and Alcibiades. Look at these busts: this lock of Titus's is full of kindness, but it's important to combine it with this one of Caracalla's, which is very severe^ and enliven them both with a few very coquettish ones of Alcibiades's. You will look very well.
The operation was sometimes successful, but certain customers were not so pleased - Redhead Yorke, for instance, the Englishman, when he went with his wife to have both their heads trimmed Paris fashion. Mrs. Yorkers hair was first tortured 'in such a way that she looked as if she had just come out of her bath'. The husband's turn came next; his powdered queue fell under the scissors., and his head was soon covered with a multitude of little curls that gave the poor man 'the look of the young orang-outangs to be seen at the Exchange in Exeter'. But this was not all. Taking a pair of whiskers from his pocket, the artist tried to gum them on the patient's cheeks. Yorke resisted, but was obliged for the sake of peace to pay eighteen francs to have done with the accursed hairdresser. 'After all, he had earned them', he sighed, 'by changing my wife into a savage, myself into a baboon, and making us reek of his pomades and perfumes.'
More than one Frenchman had been struck by the elegance of these Britishers who had come to France on the morrow of the Peace of Amiens, to be only very temporary friends, and their example soon wrought greater discipline in French fashions. Seized with anglomania, the Incroyable gradually forgot his extravagances and became the perfect juvenile lead of the Empire, as he is shown in the fashion books of the Mesangere and Carle Vernet's illustrations.
There we may admire him in his blue or black dress coat, pomaded like Elleviou, shod with riding-boots that would have been the envy of Franconi. He was already the type of the modern dandy. His elegance smacked somewhat of the other side of the Channel, but there was a military touch about it too; henceforth all formal dress would look like a uniform.
The most obvious result of this double tendency was that men now attached the utmost importance to the correctness of their attire. Stendhal confesses jokingly that he 'could only play the fop if his get-up was faultless'. His whole evening would be spoilt if a coat-button 'stood out too much'. But on the other hand, what a satisfaction there was in looking one's best! *I think I was never so brilliant,' he notes in his diary on February 25, 1805; 'I was wearing a black waistcoat, black silk breeches and stockings, with a cinnamon-bronze coat, a very well tied cravat, a superb shirt-front. Never, I believe, was my ugliness more effaced by my general appearance/ And he adds without false modesty, C I looked a very handsome man, after the style of Talina.'
The change in women's dress was not unconnected with the evolution of masculine costume. Grecian nudities remained in favour for a time, but a campaign was soon started against them.
It was suggested to the Parisiennes that their too transparent tunics offered too easy discoveries to prying eyes. One chronicler, J.-B. Salgues, even pointed out what might in plainer terms be called the dangers of standing with their back to the light. But the passage is worth quoting:
'When the beautiful orb that illumes us stands almost perpendicularly above our heads no harm is occasioned; the shadow is projected on the ground in a vertical direction and the modesty of our ladies is in safety. But when, changing its position, its chariot leans to the horizon, its sparkling rays, passing through the thin veils opposing them, light up their too pervious texture, and unknown to the fair one, lay open to profane glances those charms, the sight of which was not intended for them/
If the emulators of Phryne did not understand (and they might be excused for not doing so), the lesson took a much plainer form on the day when one of them, literally naked, was greeted by whistles in the Jardin de FElysee and forced to make her escape amid the hooting of the onlookers. She had mistaken the Consulate for the Directory, Bonaparte's regime for that of Barras.
From the moment of his accession to power, the new Master had expressed his intention of suppressing this masquerade of gallantry. He wished the women of his entourage to display a luxury in better taste. Mme. Tallien was seriously scolded for having been seen in the balcony of the Opera semi-clad as Diana. And one evening, in the drawing-room at the Luxembourg, Josephine's friends having exaggerated their decolletage, the First Consul made a show of cramming the fireplace with logs. 'The ladies are naked., as you see! 7 They did not need to be told twice, and dresses soon began to change their appearance.
The metamorphosis was already discernible at the party given by Berthier in 1801. The fair creatures present were already worthy to take their places under the vaulted roof of Notre-Dame on the day of the Coronation, and the main lines of Empire fashion were more or less settled: the waist still very high up, the sleeves short and puffed, the tunic falling straight, moulding the forms without stressing them, the feet shod in thin buskins, the coiffure very small, enhanced by ribbons and gems —such was the canon of official dress, fixed at the first attempt.
It needed only a few years of the reign to extract from these elements the most they had to offer. By that time there would be a Court surrounding the new Caesar, made to his order and to his measure, brilliant, magnificent, setting an example to the oldest monarchies of Europe; and at the service of the women of this Court, of Josephine in particular, a man of inventive genius to create models without number, and to repeat at the Tuileries the miracles performed by Rose Bertin at Versailles - a role that fell to Leroy, couturier to the Empress.
This Napoleon of fashion lived at No. 89 Rue de la Loi, at the corner of the Rue Menars, familiar to our century for a little dark shop selling old books. He had a partner to begin with, a certain Mme Rimbault, a linen-draper, but once his fame was established the style of the firm was reduced to a single name. Leroy's triumph as the maker of the most beautiful dresses for tie Coronation was so overwhelming that nobody afterwards dreamed of disputing his supremacy.