Fashion’s diplomatic role: an instrument of French prestige-based commercial diplomacy,1960s–1970s

Abstract

This article re-examines the aid-to-couture plans enacted by France at the end of the 1960s from both historical and diplomatic perspectives. In so doing, it assesses the decision-making process of French public authorities, couturiers and textile manufacturers by cross-referencing archives from multi-stakeholder meetings with diplomatic archives. By building on the current literature in Fashion Studies that stands at the confluence of cultural and business perspectives, this article adds to it a diplomatic perspective to re-evaluate the role of fashion for diplomacy. It argues that contrary to the traditional narrative on the role of fashion in favour of textile exports, haute couture and fashion instead became a fixture of France’s post-war prestige-based commercial diplomacy through a mix of nation branding avant la lettre and export branding.

Introduction

This article is an investigation into the role played by fashion in nation branding endeavours. More specifically, the goal of this article is to study the case of France’s 1968–81 aid-to-couture plan from a historical perspective mobilising primary sources to understand the political and diplomatic motivations behind state sponsorship of haute couture promotional events. That is, what are the expectations – in terms of policy objectives – of the French authorities regarding the influence of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s? In so doing, this article connects the perspectives of diplomatic history, fashion studies and nation branding to shed a new light on France’s post-war prestige-based commercial diplomacy while contributing to integrating the role of fashion for diplomacy and, reciprocally, the perspective of diplomacy and nation branding to fashion studies.

The advent of ‘nation brand’ as a concept, first coined in 1996 by Simon Anholt, a British policy advisor, ¹ has not only contributed to opening a new field of study and practice but has had a significant influence on the field of public diplomacy. While the distinction between traditional diplomacy and public diplomacy was largely consensual, with the former encompassing formal relations between state representatives and the latter studying the relationship between ‘the government, the media and public opinion’, ² the ‘nation brand’ – and ‘nation branding’ – contributed to the discussion on what Jan Melissen outlined as the ‘new public diplomacy’. ³ In this regard, Nicholas J. Cull most clearly distinguishes between the updated terminology associated with this ‘new public diplomacy’ explaining that ‘the language of prestige and international image has given way to talk of “soft power” and “branding”’. ⁴ In turn, this merging of nation branding and public diplomacy generated a debate on the nature of their relationship that has yet to reach a consensus. ⁵ As Gyorgy Szondi explains in detail in his 2008 paper for the Dutch Clingendael Institute, the debate has not subsided with some arguing that nation branding is a tool of public diplomacy, some affirming – to the contrary – that public diplomacy is a tool of nation branding, and some contending that while both are related, they refer to distinct enough realities as to make them separate concepts. ⁶

However, beyond these debates on the operationalisation of nation/place branding, the nation brand has started to be studied from a historical perspective in recent years. That is, what Jessica Gienow-Hecht explains to be a ‘history of nation branding avant la lettre’. ⁷ In 2018, Gienow-Hecht co-directed Nation Branding in Modern History (New York: Berghahn) with Carolin Viktorin, Annika Estner and Marcel K. Will. As explained by Mads Mordhorst, while this collective volume used nation branding as an analytical concept to look at its history avant la lettre it simultaneously recognised nation branding as a ‘time- and context-specific concept’. ⁸ It is here that Mordhorst – in line with Gienow-Hecht’s work – highlights the fact that ‘the nation-building process has been going on for centuries concomitantly with an integrated process of what we today call brand building’. ⁹

As such, nation branding avant la lettre constitutes the framework of this article, which looks at the paradox that was the second aid-to-couture plan by the French government from the end of the 1960s throughout the 1970s. There are three main reasons why this article looks at this subsidy scheme within this framework. First, these two decades see the parallel implementation of both a French and an Italian subsidy scheme aimed towards high fashion, the French plan being implemented from 1968 to 1981 and the Italian plan organised by the Centre for the Development of Clothing and Haute Couture Exports (CITAM) being implemented from 1965 to the end of the 1970s. ¹⁰ However, the major difference between the French and Italian fashion systems at the time revolved around the centralisation on Paris in France compared to the Italian decentralisation, fashion regionalism remaining the norm until the mid-1960s with Milan and Rome sharing the leadership of Italian fashion afterwards. ¹¹ In this article, the case of the Italian subsidy scheme is briefly mobilised to look at its main differences and similarities when compared to the French subsidy scheme. The goal is to more precisely outline the export branding strategy of France that went further than Italy’s strategy based on a ‘country-of-origin effect’ limited to textiles and apparel. This was rooted on an essential difference between both their fashion systems, and it constitutes a large part of the second reason this article looks at the 1968–81 aid-to-couture plan.

The decentralisation of Italy’s fashion system is at the heart of the Made in Italy brand because, contrary to the centralised French fashion, the Italian ‘branding’ was more diffuse and, as is argued by Eugenia Paulicelli, in fact, became a part of the Made in Italy brand. ¹² This is important because the Made in Italy campaign was launched in the 1970s with the triumph of Milan ¹³ at a time when the French subsidy scheme was evolving following the aftermath of the first oil crisis and the progressive decline of de Gaulle’s policy of grandeur after his resignation in April 1969. ¹⁴ These distinctions are essential because they open up the study of nation branding avant la lettre to earlier forms of this activity as discussed by Gienow-Hecht regarding ‘country-of-origin effect’ or ‘made-in image’ ‘that, since the 1960s, studied how consumers’ general perceptions of a country – national characteristics, economics, politics, history – collectively create an overall image linked to the products of that country’. ¹⁵ This brings us to the third reason to look at the French subsidy scheme.

That is, contrary to the 1952–60 aid-to-couture plan, there were not one, but two distinct subsidy schemes implemented at the end of the 1960s. The first plan to emerge in 1967 was an aid-to-couture plan dedicated solely to subsidising ‘propaganda’ (propagande) actions by members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne (CSCP), the trade association for Parisian couturiers. At the time, for the French diplomats, civil servants and couturiers that referred to propagande, the term only conveyed the concept of promotional actions and lacked any negative connotation that can be associated with the English word. ¹⁶ As such, I use the word ‘propaganda’ throughout this article with this meaning in mind as well as to convey the concept as I found it in the historical sources. The second plan was the aid-to-textile creation plan that began in 1969. Both plans encompassed the two missions of the original 1952–60 aid-to-couture plan. The initial plan had started as a subsidy to encourage the use of French fabrics in haute couture collections but progressively turned towards ‘propaganda’ actions abroad, with the percentage of subsidy allocated to ‘propaganda’ increasing from 12.5% in 1952 to 36.2% in 1960. ¹⁷ Drawing a distinction between the two components of the second aid-to-couture plan is not just nitpicking but key to understanding the role haute couture and fashion played as part of post-war French diplomacy.

To shed new light on these schemes, this article draws extensively from the archives of the Centre interprofessionnel de rénovation des structures industrielles et commerciales de l’industrie textile (CIRIT), which was the parastatal body managing the subsidies of both late 1960s plans. In addition to these records, held at the French National Archives, this study relies on French diplomatic archives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This article also draws on the concept of dematerialisation of fashion, which refers to the waning importance of clothing compared with that of ideas in the dissemination of fashions. This phenomenon encompasses two main aspects: the growing importance of brands and the selling of designs. These two aspects can be traced back to the early 20th century, when French couturier Paul Poiret was the first to unite a variety of cosmetics and haute couture garments under his brand. ¹⁸ However, the dematerialisation of fashion would change gears after World War II, led by Christian Dior, who paved the way to brand merchandising alongside design; in 1948 Dior was the first couturier to enter the world of licences, signing a contract with Prestige, a New York business, for it to produce nylon stockings under the Dior brand. ¹⁹

In essence, the dematerialisation of fashion is an historical phenomenon interwoven with technological progress in the field of media and communication, which went through a post-war golden age in the West. Indeed, the 1950s and 1960s witnessed the replacement of drawings with colour photographs to disseminate fashion images, the popularisation of television and the growth of department stores mobilising new marketing strategies aimed at democratising designs for the mass market. ²⁰ In turn, the dematerialisation of fashion relates to the branding process as the main products sold being immaterial – fashion images and designs –, their quality no longer stems from that of the fabrics but from that of the brand, which, in turn, derives its quality from its renown, meaning the scope of its dissemination. Where haute couture traditionally derived its prestige from its rarity and exclusiveness, the dematerialisation of fashion reversed the phenomenon and made it so that value now also stemmed from democratisation. The main products being sold by couture houses going from handmade garments to designs bound for reproduction and licences tying the names of couturiers to an ever-increasing range of goods beyond clothing. The 8th of February 1971 issue of Women’s Wear Daily offers a good example of this shift. In it, couturiers and French high-end fabrics manufacturers were interviewed regarding the importance of haute couture. The newly released global value of the couture business for the year 1969 spoke for itself: of an approximate total figure of $4 billion – suspected to possibly ‘be a widely inflated figure and not truly indicative’ by the reporters –, only $35.4 million came from sales of haute couture garments. The balance was ‘from businesses, merchandise and other items carrying the names of couture houses’; couturiers made the point ‘that without couture itself, these other ventures would never see the light of day’. ²¹ That is, brand names and licences were at the heart of the dematerialised fashion system rooted in the fashion images and designs produced by couture, which the French authorities sought to instrumentalise in the 1968–81 aid-to-couture plan.

The re-evaluation of this second aid-to-couture plan is important for two reasons: one analytical and the other methodological. The analytical relevance of this article is linked to studies on French commercial diplomacy from an historical perspective. Laurence Badel, an historian of international relations who wrote the first book dedicated to the public structures of French commercial diplomacy in the 20th century, links France’s commercial diplomacy to de Gaulle’s policy of grandeur in the 1960s through a mix of government contracts to large industrial groups (grands contrats) and export credits. ²² The underlying motive of this policy of grandeur was to mobilise what Charles de Gaulle saw as the ‘moral means’ of France to express, ‘its refusal to resign itself to playing a secondary role in the world that would be commensurate with its material means alone’. ²³ Without expressly naming it a ‘nation branding’ initiative, this arguably constitutes a good example of ‘nation branding avant la lettre’. Within this context, France explored such strategies particularly during the Cold War in order to export not only goods or services but also what were deemed ‘universalisable values’ through international fairs and technical exhibitions abroad, inaugurating ‘a prestige-based commercial diplomacy that participated in the affirmation of the regained grandeur’ of France. ²⁴ This variant of commercial diplomacy tied together three key aspects: nation branding through grandeur, commercial diplomacy through export promotion, ²⁵ and – for the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ scheme – country-of-origin effect, which is defined by Ying Fan as a product-related form of nation branding referring ‘to the image conferred on products by their country of origin (e.g., German cars, French wine) and the reverse conferral of image on a country by its products’. ²⁶

This analytical relevance ties in with the methodological relevance of the article, which links the study of diplomacy to that of fashion and nation branding. This article seeks to bridge the gap that currently exists between fashion and diplomatic historiographies. Indeed, since 2000, fashion historiography – the traditional preserve of cultural history and cultural studies – has been examined by business historians interested in what Regina Lee Blaszczyk and Véronique Pouillard define as the ‘two faces of the fashion system: the designer who stands in the spotlight and the manager who works in the shadows’. ²⁷ Thus, fashion historiography mainly sits at the confluence of business history and cultural history. ²⁸ However, in the last decade a number of studies have added a political perspective to fashion historiography through the study of the political uses of clothing, such as to express political dissent or to identify certain political ideologies. ²⁹ In 2017, for instance, international political theorist Andreas Behnke edited a volume that collected an international array of scholarly works on the political uses of clothing in order, ‘to study both the fashioning of the political, as well as the politicization of fashion’. ³⁰ This is also key to understand that – while this article mainly looks at the role of fashion for diplomacy as well as its prestige and alleged commercial influences – the role of fashion goes beyond simple lobbying, being truly multifaceted. ³¹ In fact, as part of the aid-to-couture plans of the 1960s and 1970s discussed in this article, while lobbying in favour of French textiles remained a key part of the expected role at first, it slowly shifted towards a wider prestige influence coming closer to nation branding (or country-of-origin effect more specifically) than lobbying.

To investigate this changing role of fashion as part of France’s post-war prestige-based commercial diplomacy the article will proceed in three steps. First, we will cross the post-war contexts of France’s period of affluence that Jean Fourastié named ‘Trente Glorieuses’ (Glorious Thirty Years) and that of the changing Western sociocultural setting that Arthur Marwick styled ‘Long Sixties’ with the dematerialisation of fashion at the heart of fashion’s changing system and influence. ³² Second, we will analyse the new plans of 1967 and 1969 within the changing international trade context of the textile industry. Third, we will examine the growing interest of French diplomats in the role of fashion and haute couture.

The post-war dematerialisation of fashion

The importance of fashion’s dematerialisation is tied to the two post-war contexts of the Glorious Thirty Years (1946–75) and the Long Sixties (1958–74), with the socioeconomic and sociocultural upheavals they respectively fostered. In France, economic growth started to increase in the 1960s before reaching its peak between 1969 and 1973, putting the country second only to Japan with an average yearly growth of almost 7%. ³³ However, to understand the key element of growth in the fashion industry we need to look to the Marshall Plan–led modernisation of western Europe. Between 1949 and 1960, ‘4700 Frenchmen went to the United States as part of 500 [productivity] missions’, with the French ‘apparel industry showing a strong expectation of modernity’. ³⁴ As historian Richard F. Kuisel notes, the initial French reluctance to what was perceived as Americanisation had receded in the 1960s, with a ‘majority of Frenchmen thinking France could adapt to the United States and some accepting a healthy dose of Americanisation so that France could open up and modernise its economy’. ³⁵ This turn towards modernisation through the American example ties in with the fashion system that Paris still dominated in the 1950s, with Parisian couturiers selling patterns to American manufacturers, which reproduced them in their ready-to-wear lines. ³⁶ In fact, the Fédération Française des Industries du Vêtement Féminin (FFIVF) – the trade association for the women’s apparel industry – adopted the expression ‘prêt-à-porter’ in the 1950s as a literal translation of the American term ‘ready-to-wear’, which announced the advent of a new range of mass-produced apparel that would take off in France in the 1960s. ³⁷

This development resulted in a democratisation of fashion that contrasted with the limited access to the handmade couture garments that had characterised the fashion system until then. ³⁸ This democratisation was directly linked to the sociocultural upheaval of the Long Sixties that in France was especially marked by the centrality of the May 1968 events. ³⁹ Without going into the details of this 1968 movement – indeed, it is the subject of a number of complete anthologies ⁴⁰ – it is nonetheless important to note that this movement expressed a social malaise that revealed two trends underlying the changing fashion context of the time: first, the advent of a youth culture grounded in the post-war baby boom; and second, growing unemployment in France. ⁴¹ Starting in 1965, this increasing joblessness was rooted in the arrival on the labour market of the large post-war generations as well as more women entering the workforce. ⁴² If the latter marked the first signs of a changing economy that would be shaken by the 1970s oil crises and recession, the former had more immediate consequences on fashion, as illustrated by the term that Diana Vreeland, editor-in-chief of Vogue, coined in 1965 to describe this new phenomenon: it was a veritable ‘youthquake’. ⁴³ With a growing purchasing power, French youth – like their Western counterparts – were now attracted by the Swinging London that had brought to the forefront new fashions the likes of Mary Quant’s miniskirts, epitomising the advent of ready-to-wear apparel and the decline of Parisian haute couture. ⁴⁴

This shift was also epitomised with the change in relationship between Hollywood, Paris and haute couture, which had reached its heyday in the 1950s initiated with An American in Paris (1951) in what Vanessa R. Schwartz called ‘the “wave” of 1950s Frenchness films, which were, for the most part, Paris films’. ⁴⁵ While the 1950s had seen prestigious French haute couture houses directly tied to movie stars in American films, as with Givenchy’s collaboration with Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954) and Funny Face (1957) – culminating with Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) and the still-iconic little black dress worn by Hepburn ⁴⁶ – or Dior’s collaboration with Jane Russell in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955), the changing fashion context of the 1960s and 1970s invariably impacted this relationship. ⁴⁷ This reconfiguration materialised most concretely through the person of Brigitte Bardot whom achieved superstardom status in the 1960s United States (as well as in France) reflecting the new aspirations brought about by the youthquake. ⁴⁸ As explained by Hebe Dorsey, ‘Brigitte Bardot . . . pronounced the death sentence on the whole couture. “Couture,” she said, “is for the mémées (grannies). It is da-dame (dowdy, or worse)”’. ⁴⁹ In addition, as discussed by Felix Fuhg, ‘at the same time, Italian fashion was boosted with the help of Hollywood’, ⁵⁰ reflecting the weakening clout of Paris on Western fashion. As such, while Hollywood had been an important vector of influence for haute couture in the 1950s, it was less and less the case starting in the 1960s. However, in parallel to this decline, couturiers managed to adapt by turning to licences and high-end ready-to-wear – or prêt-à-porter des couturiers – with the creation of Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, Ungaro Parallèle, a Courrèges ready-to-wear line and Miss Dior, all in 1966, and Givenchy Nouvelle Boutique in 1968. Solange Montagné-Villette’s synthetic analysis explains this turn of events: ‘The 1960s were the years of the brand’. ⁵¹

The dematerialisation of fashion that took root in the 1960s with the developing importance of brands and licences became a staple of the fashion business in the 1970s – a decade that saw the rise of feminism and hippie-inspired anti-fashion as well as a dampened consumerism stemming from the oil crises and ensuing recessions. ⁵² As Pouillard explains, in the 1970s the changing consumption habit of ‘the typical woman fashion consumer . . . privileged workwear, separates and pantsuits at day time, . . . there was no more place for haute couture, not even for wholesale couture, the line with which Dior had entered the US market’. ⁵³ This is important because the United States was the most important market for haute couture from 1930 to the 1970s. ⁵⁴ However, the example of Dior in the United States helps to clarify the all-importance of the dematerialisation of fashion. Christian Dior-New York remained active on the American market in the 1970s by ‘managing some fifty Dior licenses . . . of which the largest part was menswear’. ⁵⁵ Thus, the dematerialisation of fashion helped some couturiers keep a foothold in markets where the demand for haute couture had fallen.

With the continuous reduction of couture activities, the hatching of licences in increasing numbers, and the growth of prêt-à-porter, the 1970s saw a consolidation of these activities within a new trade association in France. This new entity brought together couturiers and ‘fashion creators’ (créateurs de mode) – high-end prêt-à-porter designers with a brand image, or griffe. The new Couture Federation was founded in November 1973, formalising the distinction between high-end prêt-à-porter and ready-to-wear whose manufacturers were part of the FFIVF. ⁵⁶ However, the survival of haute couture through immaterial brands and licences instead of the selling of garments came at the cost of seamstresses whose jobs were cut by more than half between 1953 and 1973: from 6799 for 59 houses to 3120 for 25 houses. ⁵⁷

In the 1960s and 1970s, haute couture successfully adapted to the democratisation of fashion brought about by the combined socioeconomic and sociocultural upheavals of the Glorious Thirty Years and the Long Sixties by shifting from being a trade centred on the artisanal creation of garments to one that harnessed brand names and licences. This marks a crucial distinction between the context of the initial aid-to-couture plan and the two new plans at the end of the 1960s, which conditioned their respective objectives.

The new aid plans in a changing international trade context

The immediate context that paved the way for the implementation of the two plans was the 1964–65 crisis in the French textile and apparel industries. This crisis was at the origin of the CIRIT (1966–80), a parastatal body tasked with funding the restructuring of the French textile and apparel industries and ‘ruled by a board dominated by the trade association and the textile office of the Ministry of Industry’. ⁵⁸ The stabilisation of consumption that brought demand close to a standstill, in turn driving a cyclical slowdown in purchases, triggered the crisis in mid-1964. ⁵⁹ The CIRIT was financed by a new textile tax modelled after one that had been implemented in 1943 to support textile production and had just been rescinded in October 1965, having remained active after the end, on 1 January 1961, of the Textile Fund that managed it – which incidentally also terminated the 1952–60 aid-to-couture plan it had financed. ⁶⁰ The CIRIT had two main goals. First, it aimed to ensure that the French textile and apparel industries were able to face rising imports resulting from the trade liberalisation within the European Common Market and the advent of new competitive textile-and-apparel-producing countries. Second, it sought to increase French exports of textiles and apparel. ⁶¹ This second goal reflected the zeitgeist in France; 1965 was the year in which the export-focused cinquième Plan (Fifth Plan) was developed for 1966–70, centring on the competitiveness of French industry. ⁶² This marks a key similarity with the Italian case that, in response to the 1963–64 fiscal and monetary crisis that ended Italy’s ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s, ‘decided to remain on the path of “low consumption-low salaries-export push”’. ⁶³ As such, both the Italian and French high fashion subsidy schemes were part of the export drive implemented by their respective government, with Italy’s CITAM competition starting in 1965 and France’s CIRIT ‘couture propaganda’ subsidy starting in 1968. In short, the CIRIT sought to mobilise French textile and apparel for their country-of-origin effect, which Ying Fan explains as having a ‘clear focus on promoting specific economic interests’ – in this case exports –, tying this strategy to what Fan names ‘export branding’. ⁶⁴

It is in this context that the CIRIT examined the CSCP subsidy request on 16 December 1966. This first request following the end of the aid-to-couture plan in 1960 was two pronged: 1.5 million francs ‘to encourage French couturiers to use as many French high-end fabrics as possible’ and 0.65 million francs ‘to develop propaganda for couture’. ⁶⁵ Since the end of the 1952–60 aid-to-couture plan, which guaranteed that subsidised couturiers used around 90% French fabrics, that proportion had fallen below 40%. ⁶⁶ While the CIRIT considered both requests valid in principle, its report suggested reducing the amount from 2.15 million francs to 0.5 million at most, because the proposed actions were peripheral to the CIRIT mandate. ⁶⁷ On 9 May 1967 the CSCP, informed of this decision, opted to use this revised amount exclusively to subsidise its ‘propaganda’ plan. The plan had four aspects: participation in promotional events abroad (340,000 francs), reinforcement of the CSCP’s press and ‘propaganda’ services (60,000 francs), actions taken to defend its members’ artistic property (75,000 francs) and subsidising haute couture hats (25,000 francs). ⁶⁸ On 19 May 1967, the first allotment of the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan of 0.5 million francs was approved by the CIRIT for the year 1968 to subsidise actions by couture houses that presented garments using at least 50% French fabrics. ⁶⁹

While this article does not aim to delve into the minute details of each subsidy request, it was necessary to investigate this first request to clarify the French public authorities’ expectations for haute couture at the root of the ‘propaganda’ plan. That is, subsidising the participation of couture houses to promotional events abroad as part of the larger policy of export promotion for the textile and apparel industries. While this was evidently done to promote haute couture, it also served to promote French exports at large by leveraging haute couture brand recognition to create an association between French exports showcased in these promotional events and the reputation of quality and good taste associated with haute couture. However, before further examining the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan, we will look at the nature of the aid-to-textile creation plan. This will help distinguish between the aid to the high-end fabrics industry and what this article argues was an instrument of prestige commercial diplomacy.

The aid-to-textile creation plan of 1969 was requested by the Chambre Syndicale des Maisons de Tissus Spéciaux à la Couture (CSMTSC), the trade association for manufacturers of high-end fabrics. The plan was intended to incite couturiers to use French fabrics, by offering the first cuts needed to produce a collection for the runway free of charge – with 90% of the cost subsidised by the state and the rest covered by the manufacturers. The percentage of state subsidy diminished progressively until it reached 75% in 1974, remaining at this level until the plan’s final allotment in 1979. ⁷⁰ In order to be subsidised, haute couture houses had to present collections made using at least 55% French fabrics. ⁷¹ This plan included roughly 20 couture houses and at least 30 fabrics manufacturers, with yearly variations depending on adherence to the rules and the closing or opening of businesses. ⁷² The rationale of this plan was that the presentations of collections would lead to a significant increase in sales for French fabrics manufacturers through the reproduction of garments by couturiers and apparel manufacturers. For the whole period, the proportion of French fabrics used by couturiers stabilised at around 75%. ⁷³ Ultimately, the CIRIT recognised that this aid had a positive effect for French fabrics in couture collections but ended the plan in 1979 because it judged that ‘the system had exhausted its effects’. ⁷⁴

The main problem with the aid-to-textile creation plan can be traced back to the 1971 Enquête du Contrôleur Martin, an inquiry made on behalf of the CIRIT to evaluate the plan’s usefulness. This inquiry revealed that for the autumn/winter collections of 1970–71, members of the CSMTSC had sold 2.1 million francs of high-end fabrics directly linked to their use by couture houses. ⁷⁵ Faced with such small numbers, the CSMTSC judged that the methodology adopted did not reflect the real numbers and refused to acknowledge this report. ⁷⁶ To respond to these criticisms and evaluate the results of the plan, the CIRIT completed a second inquiry, focused on the autumn/winter 1971–72 collections, that confirmed the initial results: CSMTSC members declared having sold roughly 2.3 million francs of fabrics. ⁷⁷ However, the new inquiry now also encompassed the prêt-à-porter reproduction of couture, approximated at 6.5 million francs, for a total of 8.8 million francs. ⁷⁸ With such small values relative to the entire textile industry, whose exports for the year 1972 totalled 11,423 million francs, CSMTSC president Philippe Rolloy reiterated in 1973 that these numbers should be discounted for the same methodological reasons. ⁷⁹ In fact, on 1 December 1976, Rolloy confirmed that both he and Jacques Mouclier, the CSCP executive officer, ‘were in agreement that it was not possible to establish a link between the consumption abroad of French-made fabrics and the quantities used by the couturiers for their large collection, models and repetitions included’. For both, the key role played by haute couture in terms of textile exports was grounded in undefined ‘other considerations’ that had allegedly resulted in the implementation of the aid-to-textile creation plan. ⁸⁰ However, as was made clear in a 17 January 1977 CIRIT report, this interpretation was not shared by the state, for which this plan was meant to support French high-end fabrics, not haute couture. ⁸¹

This analysis of the aid-to-textile creation plan helps to distinguish the two interpretations of haute couture’s role by the historical actors, which, this article argues, were reflected in the two plans. Indeed, the analysis of the CIRIT reports and CSMTSC rebukes reveal a tendency among the couturiers and fabrics manufacturers to pay lip service to the role of haute couture for promoting fabrics exports while dismissing all quantified evaluations as methodologically lacking until finally admitting it was impossible to accurately evaluate that role. If this generated complaints on the part of the public authorities in the context of the aid-to-textile creation plan – which had been approved specifically to help French fabrics, not haute couture – it did not lead to criticism regarding the inscrutable nature of fashion’s influence. As we will see, this inscrutability was in fact at the heart of the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan.

The growing diplomatic interest in ‘couture propaganda’

The dematerialisation of fashion is at the core of the 1968–81 aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan. It is also arguably a key reason for the inscrutability of haute couture’s impact on fabrics exports, because of the intangible influence of brand names and fashion images. However, it was these two aspects of haute couture’s renown that had become the focal point of ‘couture propaganda’ since 1957. That year saw a change in the Aid Compact (Convention d’Aide) of the 1952–60 aid-to-couture plan, fusing ‘propaganda’ with the protection of couturiers’ names and creations. ⁸² With this reorientation, haute couture began its decoupling from French textiles as brands were now at the core of their ‘propaganda’ strategy, not handmade couture garments. ⁸³ Subsidised couturiers started to participate in promotional events involving French commerce as a whole, beyond only that of textiles. These events – either French Weeks or 2-week-long French Fortnights – became a fixture of ‘couture propaganda’. In fact, on 6 December 1960 this role was codified in a note from the commercial counsellor (conseiller commercial) of the French embassy in the United States stating that haute couture was to be one of the highlights of the French Fortnights, crowning the events and ensuring wide media coverage. ⁸⁴

In this regard, the new plan of 1967 drew from the ‘couture propaganda’ strategy that dated back to 1957 while also adapting to the increasing dematerialisation of fashion. This marks both a difference and a similarity with the Italian subsidy scheme. Indeed, while the Italian case differed because the CITAM subsidy scheme starting in 1965 was the first of its kind in Italy, it was nevertheless similar in that it drew on the French 1952–60 aid-to-couture plan to shape its selection process of subsidised fashion houses with the use of national fabrics for promotion purposes being the main objective. ⁸⁵ In France, the adaptation to dematerialisation was reflected in a new feature that had not been part of the previous plan: up to 50% of expenses for ‘propaganda movies’ (films de propagande) were now subsidised. These 26-minute-long promotional movies showed the collections of subsidised couture houses and were produced in collaboration with Pathé. ⁸⁶ They were distributed globally by the network of embassies and consulates of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs through its Cultural Relations Division. ⁸⁷ Before the autumn/winter 1971 collections, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also covered parts of the costs for both production and edition of the film copies. ⁸⁸ These ‘propaganda movies’ were then scheduled on local TV stations in major cities in roughly 100 embassies and diplomatic posts around the world. ⁸⁹

Thus, this new plan added a layer to the influence of haute couture beyond the prestige role it had played since 1957. The couturiers had pursued this mission in the 1960s when, in 1961, the remainder of the aid-to-couture’s final allotment was dedicated to ‘propaganda’ actions. ⁹⁰ Between 1961 and 1967, these actions ranged from galas – such as in Chicago in 1962 for the benefit of cancer research or in Montréal during the 1967 universal exposition – to French Fortnights in Chicago and Peoria and French Weeks and exhibitions in San Francisco and Montréal in 1963. ⁹¹ As such, before the second aid-to-couture plan, the participation of haute couture to these promotional actions abroad continued in line with the ‘country-of-origin effect’ expected by French authorities that looked at ‘how consumers’ general perceptions of a country created a collective image that specifically related to the products of that country’. ⁹² Starting in 1967, if the CIRIT still expected ‘couture propaganda’ to support exports by participating in such events, haute couture movies also offered the opportunity of reaching a wider audience while supporting the importance of couture brands in the context of growing worldwide fashion competition.

Indeed, in the spirit of the CIRIT’s restructuration mission, the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan also helped modernise the trade. On 11 August 1975, Jacques Mouclier laid out the Couture Federation’s plan regarding its promotional agenda. Stating that the movies distributed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were ‘indispensable and intended to support the brand image of couture’, Mouclier added that events would now require ‘direct interventions targeted toward developing markets like Japan, Brazil, the United States and South Africa’. ⁹³ This marked the turning point from what had been until then an industry aid, in the same style as the aid-to-textile creation, to a component of French commercial diplomacy. Up to this point, the yearly CIRIT reports expressed a wish to see more ‘propaganda’ actions in foreign markets. ⁹⁴ This also reflected the expectations of representatives of the Direction des Relations Économiques Extérieures (DREE) of the Ministry of Economy attached to French embassies. As discussed by Laurence Badel, these commercial counsellors were an essential part of the French network of economic expansion posts abroad after World War II. ⁹⁵ They had multiple roles from market prospectors to trade facilitators as well as supporting the organisation of commercial events such as French Weeks and French Fortnights. As such, the DREE representatives constituted the hinge between French businesses and foreign markets. For this reason, at a time when France aimed for an export drive, they sought to encourage the types of ‘propaganda’ actions haute couture were subsidised to participate to, the period 1960–80 having constituted a period of intensification of state support in favour of national businesses on foreign markets. ⁹⁶

In a 12 November 1976 report, the CIRIT’s expectations were clearly expressed. This report reaffirmed that the promotional aspect of couture’s actions had not always clearly been in favour of export development in foreign markets but that recent changes – particularly in targeting Japan and South Africa – were now in line with what was expected. ⁹⁷ That is, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the French diplomats expected that state-subsidised haute couture promotional events would help ‘sell’ France to key markets while helping couturiers approach new markets for licencing. However, the expectation from both CIRIT officials and French commercial counsellors always linked haute couture’s participation to ‘propaganda’ events abroad with general export promotion, mobilising haute couture’s prestige and brand recognition specifically for export branding. This is important to note as it only covers half of Jessica Gienow-Hecht’s definition of nation branding, which ‘seeks to tackle the question of how to market the nation both at home and abroad’, ‘couture propaganda’ chiefly aiming for the latter instead of the former. ⁹⁸ In fact, this distinction was also made by Peter van Ham in his definition of ‘place branding’ as ipso facto having two aims: external (attracting more foreign clients) and internal (giving a sense of belonging to local citizens). ⁹⁹

Following the 1973 oil crisis, which especially impacted French trade because of France’s high energy dependence, the 1974 French push for businesses to make export an ‘ardent obligation’ (ardente obligation) culminated in a dedicated textile and apparel export plan to be enacted by the CIRIT starting in 1977. ¹⁰⁰ The integration of haute couture in this new strategy placed ‘couture propaganda’ in the broader context of the new French export drive. ¹⁰¹ It is thus in this respect that these types of events grew in importance as part of France’s commercial diplomacy. Nevertheless, while export branding was the overriding expectation of French officials for ‘couture propaganda’, what is now known as nation branding was still a positive side-effect of haute couture houses’ subsidised participation to promotional events abroad as was usually noticed by consuls and ambassadors beyond commercial counsellors or CIRIT officials.

Following the 1960 note formalising the promotional influence of haute couture, French consuls and commercial counsellors continued to report on the importance of such events for France’s national interest. The French consul report on the 1962 subsidised haute couture participation in events for cancer research in Chicago testifies to the nature of the expectations regarding couture’s influence. In his 13 March 1962 report, the consul stated that ‘France had demonstrated its technical capabilities in the Midwest, with the export of Caravels and electronic machines, etc., it should no longer have any qualms about remaining “the country of quality and good taste”’. ¹⁰² This interpretation of haute couture’s role directly relates to the ‘prestige-based commercial diplomacy’ of France during the Cold War that Laurence Badel refers to in her work. This is important because the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan was based on this interpretation at the junction of nation branding avant la lettre through grandeur, export promotion, and export branding through the country-of-origin effect. Indeed, throughout the 1970s the subsidised couturiers frequently acted at the behest of French diplomats beyond their own subsidised events to welcome foreign buyers in Paris.

Each time, the expected role of ‘couture propaganda’ by French diplomatic agents was that of a rayonnement (prestige-based dissemination) taking root in haute couture’s prestige and the renown of French fashion brands. As such, the French ambassador, Jean de la Granville, asked couturiers to participate in Argentina’s French exhibition held in October 1970, in order to ensure wide media coverage. ¹⁰³ Other such events in the presence of French diplomats took place as part of French Fortnights in Dallas (October 1972), Brazil (May 1975) and South Africa (March 1976), with media coverage being lauded. ¹⁰⁴ These events took place in parallel to those enacted more specifically to help haute couture and prêt-à-porter develop their own exports, with yearly participation in store events in Japan starting in 1974 (in line with CIRIT objectives). ¹⁰⁵ However, for both couturiers and diplomats, the annual promotional movies were the centrepiece of the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan. First, this new medium ensured the presence of French fashion on global markets without the need for couture houses to participate in events in each country, reducing costs and logistical efforts. Second, this cost efficiency extended to French diplomats that could now mobilise its fashion images instead of organising local events. In turn, this highlights the duality of purpose underlying ‘couture propaganda’ from the perspective of French officials. The aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan having been implemented by the CIRIT with the core objective of export branding as part of the French export drive policy support by French commercial counsellors abroad, ambassadors and consuls sought to graft to this initial expected role that of rayonnement or, in another word, nation branding avant la lettre.

In August 1976, this was confirmed as part of the Couture Federation’s yearly bid for the renewal of the plan: in letters dated between October 1975 and January 1976, 12 French ambassadors and consuls argued for increased access to more film copies, illustrating the importance of this type of promotional tool. ¹⁰⁶ In other words, in the same year that the Couture Federation and CSMTSC would inform the CIRIT it was impossible to assess the value of haute couture’s role in favour of French fabrics exports, French diplomats were testifying to its immaterial value. The main recurring theme throughout these letters was the great interest shown by regional and national television broadcasters in such products; for instance, the French ambassador to Bolivia confirmed the promotional film ‘was an efficient means of cultural action’. ¹⁰⁷ This role of haute couture – and prêt-à-porter, starting in 1973 – was frequently actualised in the 1970s starting with events in Argentina and including events in Indonesia and Singapore as part of the French trade diversification strategy. ¹⁰⁸ However, haute couture movies offered a new, wider-reaching option for disseminating the idea that France was ‘the country of quality and good taste’, as the French consul in Chicago had put it in 1962, testifying to the growing diplomatic interest in haute couture’s potential as an instrument of nation branding avant la lettre.

This newfound importance of fashion’s role transpired in the final moments of the CIRIT, which was terminated on 31 December 1980 to be replaced by Comités professionnels de développement économique (CPDE) – professional committees for economic development –, highlighting once more the economic nature of the CIRIT that had subsidised French fashion, imbuing the expectations of French officials towards fashion’s role conceived first and foremost as an export branding instrument throughout the 1970s. ¹⁰⁹ While the aid-to-textile creation plan that was launched in 1969 was ultimately scrapped in 1979, the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan granted in 1967 ended in 1980, with the final allocation of funds in 1981. ¹¹⁰ More importantly, following the termination of the aid-to-textile creation plan in 1979, the CIRIT approved a new test project to be implemented in 1980 and 1981 to subsidise advertising inserts in magazines with an international readership to promote prêt-à-porter and haute couture garments made with French fabrics. ¹¹¹ This confirmed the shift in the expectations of French officials that had balanced both subsidy schemes throughout the 1970s, encouraging the coexistence of an industrial policy promoting the use of French fabrics with a ‘propaganda’ plan using haute couture for export branding. Now that ‘couture propaganda’ had integrated elements of nation branding avant la lettre, the industrial policy turned to export branding targeting French fabrics and textiles.

Conclusion

This article shows that the French public authorities attributed two distinct roles to fashion in the 1960s and 1970s as part of France’s diplomacy, with one taking over the other starting in the mid-1970s. With the dematerialisation of fashion in the 1960s and 1970s paralleling the changing socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts that transformed consumption patterns and the fashion system, the intangible but wider-reaching branding role of fashion attracted more interest than the more tangible role of fabrics-centred export promotion. At the end of the 1960s, as part of the CIRIT, both roles were expected and reflected in the distinction between the aid-to-textile creation plan and the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan. This marked the simultaneous difference and similarity with the Italian high fashion subsidy taking place at the same time since Italy’s subsidy scheme was similarly grounded in an export-oriented policy but was more targeted towards textiles and apparels whereas ‘couture propaganda’ in France was progressively integrated in a larger export branding strategy. Indeed, the growing inconclusiveness as to any meaningful increase in French fabrics exports through ‘couture propaganda’ was only paralleled by the growing interest by French diplomacy in couture’s general promotional influence.

This diplomatic interest dated back to 1957, with the first aid-to-couture plan, and kept growing in the 1960s with subsidised participation in haute couture events, such as French Weeks and French Fortnights, to promote French consumer goods at large. With the start of the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan in 1968, the worldwide dissemination of haute couture films by the Cultural Relations Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs added a new layer to the industry’s influence by widening its reach. While the Cultural Relations Division itself was mainly concerned with disseminating the film copies to embassies and diplomatic posts after having ceased to finance production in 1971, the DREE through the French commercial counsellors abroad, looked to haute couture to help with export branding while consuls and ambassadors progressively sought haute couture’s brand recognition for branding France. By analysing French diplomatic archives and the CIRIT historical records in combination with studies on post-war French commercial diplomacy, public diplomacy and nation branding avant la lettre, this article argues that the aid-to-couture ‘propaganda’ plan financed by the CIRIT from 1968 to 1981 cemented the role of haute couture and high-end prêt-à-porter (starting in 1973) as an element of France’s prestige-based commercial diplomacy.

This is important for two reasons. First, this article offers a new interpretation of the aid-to-couture plans of the late 1960s and 1970s. This allows an understanding that what was at the time called ‘couture propaganda’ in France – and general fashion ‘propaganda’ starting in 1973 – served as a sort of mitigation strategy by mobilising the influence of French fashion brands to promote events that supported wider French commercial interests in parallel of investing in the reorganisation of the French textile and apparel industries through the CIRIT. That is to say that this article looks at nation branding from a historical perspective – avant la lettre – to shed a new light on France’s post-war prestige-based commercial diplomacy. In doing so, it mobilised the concept of nation branding as ‘a time-transcending way to get a better understanding of the past than the past had of itself’ as Mads Mordhorst put it. ¹¹² Second, this article demonstrates that construing fashion as having a role from the perspective of diplomacy is not only academic, but rather, it was construed as such by diplomats, beyond couturiers or fabrics manufacturers defending their trade as part of subsidy requests. However, this article also highlighted the various nuances of this nation branding avant la lettre by considering the historical context underlying the decision-making process of historical actors by looking at France’s post-war prestige-based commercial diplomacy that mobilised to varying degrees export promotion, export branding and nation branding.

By approaching the subject through both historical and diplomatic perspectives, this article shed light on the nature of fashion’s role from the point of view of state diplomacy and, more specifically, in terms of nation branding avant la lettre. This can serve as a starting point to integrate the role of fashion for diplomacy as defined by historical actors as well as to add the perspective of diplomacy and nation branding avant la lettre to fashion studies. This field has grown to encompass culture and business in the last decades and adding to it the layer of diplomacy can contribute to widening the scope of this subject with a global reach as well as renewing debates.