Paris – 42 rue de Varenne – 75007 Paris Tel +33

An Exceptionally Rare French 18th-Century Painted Wood Female Mannequin wearing a Robe à la
française in silk metallic wrapped thread
Circa 1765
Height: 175 cm (5 ft. 9 in.)
Width (maximum): 88 cm (2 ft. 10 ½ in.)
Depth of base: 56 cm (1 ft. 10 in.)
Literature:
Pierre Arizzoli-Clémentel et Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros, editors, Fastes de Cour et Cérémonies Royales. Le
Costume de Cour en Europe 1650-1800, exhibition catalogue, Château de Versailles, 31 March -28 June 2009
Madeleine Delpierre, Se Vêtir au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris 1996)
Wearing a blond wig, pearl earrings, a paste brooch in the form of a ribbon and paste buckles on the sleeve, a
black ribbon around her neck and wooden shoes painted in corresponding floral decoration to the dress, mounted
on an iron pole raised on a later simulated-tortoiseshell octagonal base.
This exceptional
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mode. A remarkably similar figure appears in an engraving entitled 'La Couture ou Belle Promesse est de peu
London – 23 Berkeley Square – London W1J6HE Tel +44 20 7629 0905 Fax +44 20 7495 4511
d’effet' published 1784 in Les Belles Marchandes, Almanach historique, proverbial et chantant (reproduced in
Email [email protected]
Delpierre, fig. 51 p.164). The life-size mannequin is being used to display a dress to an elegant client in a
fashionable boutique. The figure is depicted similarly clad in wooden shoes and raised on a plinth, and interestingly
is shown without her wig, which suggests that clients may have supplied their own wigs during fittings.
The dress is certainly original to the figure, because the shoes are painted not only with identical floral sprays but
also on a darker pink ground that would have corresponded to the original hue of the dress, which has faded more
with time. The figure revolves on a central pole in order to display the dress from all angles. The dress is a typical
robe à la française, a model derived from traditional Louis XIV court dress of three parts (the grand corps or main
dress, the jupe or skirt supported by hoops and the bas de robe or train) that evolved into a simpler dress without a
train for everyday wear and had conquered European fashion by the second half of the 18th century (Gorguet
Ballesteros, ‘Caractériser le Costume de Cour. Propositions’, p.58-59).
The history of mannequins in the 18th century remains a largely unexplored subject; they are a natural evolution from
smaller fashion dolls or poupées de la mode known to have been in use for displaying new styles since the late 14th
century (see Barbara Spadaccini-Day ‘La Poupée, Premier Mannequin de Mode’, in Fastes de Cour, p.226-29).
At the court of Louis XIV dressing dolls were in vogue among Madame de Scudéry and the Précieuses, and the
use of such dolls for diffusing new fashions had apparently grown so much in importance that during the trade
embargo between France and England during the War of Spanish Succession of the early 1700s an exception was
made for poupées. A contemporary observer wrote, ‘les ministres des deux cours de Versailles et de St James’s
accordaient en faveur de ces dames un passeport inviolable à la grande poupée’, which was described as a ‘figure
d’albâtre de trois à quatre pieds, vêtue, coiffée suivante les modes les plus récentes pour servir de modèle aux
dames du pays’. At three or four feet (90 – 120 cm), these dolls were already significantly larger than a toy and were
beginning to approach actual average heights of the period.
When mannequins finally metamorphosed into actual life size is unclear, but Spaddacini-Day speculates it was in
the latter half of the eighteenth century with the rise of the marchand-merciers and the luxury retail trade in Paris,
epitomized in boutiques like that of Rose Bertin, the celebrated couturière of Marie-Antoinette. By the 1780s a
foreign visitor was able to marvel that:
'La famneuse poupée…enfin le prototype inspirateur passe de Paris à Londres tous le mois et va de là répandre
des grâces dans toute l’Europe. Il va du Nord au Midi: il pénètre à Constantinople et à Pétersbourg, et le pli qu’a
donné une main française se répète chez toutes les nations, humbles observatrices du goût de la Rue St
Honoré' (cited in Sébastien Mercier, Tableaux de Paris, 1782-83, p.227).
Paris – 42 rue de Varenne – 75007 Paris Tel +33 42 22 18 87 Fax +33 1 45 49 31 15
London – 23 Berkeley Square – London W1J6HE Tel +44 20 7629 0905 Fax +44 20 7495 4511
Email [email protected]