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Well, we follow fashion, but today we, as New London Voice, share the answer to that curious question of who invented fashion with you.
Known as the ‘first couturier’ and the ‘Napoleon of Costumers’, British fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth is considered by many to be the father of haute couture. Born on 13 October 1825 in Bourne, Lincolnshire, Charles Frederick Worth established himself in Paris as the founder of the House of Worth and the man who revolutionised the fashion industry.
In July 1889, towards the end of Charles Frederick Worth’s life, the Peterborough Express published a piece entitled ‘How a Lincolnshire Man Became a Famous Paris Milliner.’ Although Worth was far from being simply a hat maker, the article contained some interesting details around the celebrated designer’s early life.
The Peterborough Express describes how Charles Frederick Worth was born in Bourne, Lincolnshire, to ‘English parents.’ Worth’s father was a lawyer, and his parents’ ambition was for their son to ‘learn a trade.’ However, an article published some fifteen years before in the Bradford Observer has it that due to ‘some family misfortune the children [of the Worths] were obliged to abandon their studies and seek their own livelihood.’
Whatever the truth of the Worth family’s circumstances, a young Charles was apprenticed to a printer. However, as the Peterborough Express outlines, the ‘boy was so fastidious that he disdained to soil his fingers even and evinced a strong hostility to handling type.’
Against the kind remonstrances of his parents, he abandoned the printing office when he had been there but seven months and went up to London. The boy had previously written to a friend living the capital, asking for assistance in securing a position in a draper’s shop. His friends proved true, and after some difficulty procured for young Worth a situation in the house of Swan and Edgar.
The move proved to be an inspired one, as the Peterborough Express relates. Worth soon became a ‘favourite’ at the firm, and ‘for more than six years continued to grow in the firm’s favour, being treated by the heads of the establishment almost as a near relative.’
It was whilst in London that Charles Frederick Worth decided to make his next move, to Paris. According to the Peterborough Express piece, he had decided to become ‘a designer of fashions while talking with buyers for the firm.’ To this end, he resolved to learn French, and travel to the home of fashion, Paris.
Next Stop – Paris
Looking back at the life of ‘first couturier of this age,’ The Queen on 30 March 1895 describes how Charles Frederick Worth left ‘England at a desperately inartistic period.’ The piece sets the fashion scene, relating how the 1840s were ‘the days of high-stocks for men, poke-bonnets for women, and crooked-leg furniture covered with horsehair.’ Nothing, the writer for The Queen says, ‘could be more dreadful.’
Charles Worth was destined to change this dreary fashion outlook. Picking up the narrative once more, the Peterborough Express describes how a 22-year-old Worth joined the firm of Gagelin and Co. Here he would become a department head within a few years, and as the Leitrim Advertiser describes in March 1895, he would stay there for twelve years in all.
However, despite winning acclaim at Gagelin and Co., who were ‘noted for their silks,’ the firm ‘refused to take [Worth] into partnership,’ as the Leitrim Advertiser relates. The enterprising Worth had identified a gap in the Parisian fashion market, as The Queen describes:
‘Miss Flora McFlimsey of Maddison-square’ and all her friends, who found in Broadway nothing good enough to wear, were coming over to Europe to learn how to dress, and going to Paris for the latest fashions. Mr Worth saw all this and knew where his fortune lay. Soon after he had learned his business, he suggested certain enterprising movements in advance to the house in which he was employed. They hesitated and eventually declined to accept his suggestion, whereupon Mr Worth left their employ and started a business for himself in the very same premises in the Rue de la Paix, in which we find him now.
Undeterred, Charles Frederick Worth established his own design business, Worth and Bobergh, and it was during this period that he would find fame and fortune, as the main designer to the glittering court of the Second French Empire.
