The Essence of Style

The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafes, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour

Joan DeJean

A Literature Review



“For the French, taste is the most fruitful of businesses.” –Jacques Necker, 18th c. Genevan banker



Joan DeJean has a simple and bold thesis in “The Essence of Style”: that almost everything that is considered to by high style today can be traced back to the French around the reign of Louis XIV. This encompasses the areas of décor, cafes, coiffeurs, boutiques, leisure shopping, tourism, fashion, the fashion press, champagne, the cult of the celebrity and even streetlights. So over three hundred years ago, deJean posits, there was already the tyranny of name brands and consumer culture that was inflamed by advertisers who relied on sex to seduce. An interesting notion, if one previously thought this to be a purely modern phenomenon.

And indeed, many of the arguments seem convincing, citing that in the Renaissance, it was actually the pearl that symbolized wealth and beauty, while treatises of that time ranked the diamond 18th. But in the 1600’s Louis XIV developed a taste for the clear gem that Jean Baptiste Tavernier started to bring back from his travels to India. Until finally in 1669, Louis XIV spent over (to what is equivalent today as) $75 million on diamonds. DeJean also explains how she was able to convert the antiquated currency by comparing it in ratio to a labourer’s annual salary and costs of living (p. 15).

And there are a lot more interesting factoids like that to follow.

In décor, they collected lavish engravings to dazzle the room, as interior decorating became a new art of living as the necessary backdrop for a life of quality. The use of the large mirror was first put to use, effectively opening up rooms and spaces like never before. The mirror also transformed the toilette into a three-hour ritual, which essentially propelled the French cosmetic industry ahead of anywhere else in Europe.


Of course fashion was a big piece of this puzzle, with Louis XIV being such a shoe fetishist. The mule was the most glamorous shoe of the time, with a curvy heel dubbed, even today, as the “Louis”. And the French fashion industry reduced not only geographical distances, as dolls were sent around Europe with miniature versions of the latest fashions, but also social distances. Couturiers started to adapt ideas at moderately priced lines so that the mid-level stores could also sell them. Fine clothing used to be prohibitively expensive, costing well over annual salaries, and barely changed over long periods of time. Now, instead of, or at least not only, a display of wealth, they are about a “fashion personality”. Today, women spend three times more than men on average. But it was for the first time, in 1650, that the industry saw this paradigm shift and women began to out-purchase men (p. 40). While women were never previously targeted by press, this shift made the latest fashion as the news that was most desirable. The Mercure Galant spoke of “seasons”, “trends”, and “in colours.” (p. 48) Hair was not an exception. The “coiffeur” as a distinct profession was born. The invention of the salon materialized with no more house calls (p. 11). And also, the accessory became the backbone of the fashion industry. It was a superfluous change that was simple and more affordable. And in the 1690, fashion became a method of escapism, as the world beyond the sheltered couture microcosm was full of countryside famine, war threats, bankruptcy of the nation and brutal winters (p. 44). In this sense, it is very similar that in the face of economic disaster, we have a mini-phenomenon like the “Lipstick Index.”

The café scene was first made fashionable in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighbourhood. They made it chic, and made it cher (pg. 11). It also attracted a very different type of clientele than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe. It became a place that elegant women went to show off their latest fashion and hair.

And with this new fashion, shopping was also reinvented. Prior to the age of Louis XIV, fashion was often negotiated through home visits. People rarely shopped in public as the conditions were not designed for shoppers to linger. They were more like storehouses for merchandise with no attention to décor. The bottom half of the shop’s shutters folded down to make a table on which the products were displayed, and the top half folded upwards to form an awning. Thus, customers would remain in the street, never entering the premises. It was revolutionary to show off a range of offerings with displays inside the space. To have luxury goods in surroundingss that were worthy of the purchasers, to entice consumers into the store with designated window displays, these concepts were all new (p.12). And shoppers were waited on by attractive shopgirls dressed in the latest fashion, a tactic completely unique to the Parisian scene. As precursors to the chic boutiques we now know, many original high-end shops by the century’s end already began to cluster at, the still famed, rue Saint-Honoré.

Convincing people to buy for the sake of buying was complete. Thus, shopping became a whole experience, not just another chore. The market became a shopping theatre where consumers spent money because they felt that their lives were somehow transformed for the better by the event. Value was no longer only about price and performance but rather by other factors: aesthetics, elegance, and atmosphere. It was the early ad campaign, with a hefty dose of emotion and drama, promoting status and pleasure by choosing to indulge the self with a particular purchase (p. 19). This is also what instilled the creation of the modern tourism industry. The earliest appearance of “tourism” by the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1872, “born in the 17th c. Englishmen were first to practice it” and the favoured destination was Paris. The first modern guidebook published in 1690-172 introduced foreign visitors to Paris with notes not just on the major monuments but of a new kind of advice: what to eat, where to stay and most importantly, where to shop. And with Paris as the first city anywhere to illuminate its streets after dark on a regular and permanent basis, the shopping hours could be extended, and nightlife would be ever more lengthy, sociable, and entertaining (p. 202-209). The city of lights was also the city of seduction, through installing innovative but basic infrastructure.

However, there are a couple of issues with this book that must addressed. The tone of the entire book is slightly off-kilter, trying to balance between light bubbly reading with literary and historical basis. The pop culture references are laced ad nauseam; Carrie Bradshaw this, bling bling that, while the details of certain historical figures are unnecessarily elaborated. And perhaps her thesis is too blunt, too biased, as if to worship the man who called himself Sun King – to put it more accurately, everything new is not old, and not French. It seems to be a very narrow way of seeing the world of luxury as it stands today. And finally, there was the very obvious result that all this opulence planted the seed for, that she conveniently ever avoids mentioning – the French Revolution.