The birth of fashion as complex phenomenon: Aesthetic rereading of Frederick Charles Worth's practice *

Abstract

Frederick Charles Worth (1825–1895) is consensually regarded as a founder of haute couture. His business was accompanied by unprecedented marketing strategies. These strategies included also the person of dressmaker in order to change his social status. In accordance with this, dressmaking is no longer just a craft; it has begun to aspire to the position of art. This article wants to show that the process of establishing “the field of haute couture” (Bourdieu) cannot be described only in sociological terms but contains a substantial aesthetic dimension. Our analysis of Worth's social practices reveals a series of dialectical relations that constitute objects of fashion as such. The new institutional framework of haute couture inevitably accelerates changes in the material design of garments, which at the same time supports their moral obsolescence. In the second step, we discuss Charles Baudelaire's attempt to characterize the nature of specifically modern art. Baudelaire's formulations emphasize a very similar dialectical structure of modern beauty, which is constituted by its inclination to transience and decay. In this sense, Worth's innovative practice itself produces the aesthetic quality of a single apparel. So, we can read Worth's haute couture as an instance of Baudelairian modern art.