Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History

The Boulevard and the Street

The streets themselves were a kind of theatre. In his "History and Physiology of the Boulevards of Paris," Balzac wrote:

Every capital has its poem . . . where it is most particularly itself. The boulevards are today for Paris what the Grand Canal was for Venice ... what Regent Street is for London. . . . [But] . . . none is comparable to the boulevards of Paris. .. . In Regent Street ... [there is] always the same English- man and the same black suit, or the same macintosh! . . . The Grand Canal is a cadaver ... : while in Paris! . . . Oh! in Paris, there is liberty of intelligence, there is life! a strange and fruitful life . .. an artistic and amusing life of contrasts . . . drunkards, grisettes, notaries, tailors . . . friends, enemies.13

Balzac specifically described the life of the boulevards in terms of clothes: "It is there that one observes the comedy of dress. Many men, many different outfits, and many outfits, many characters!" On the boulevard St. Dems alone, one could see "a variety of blouses, torn suits, peasants, workers, lunatics, people who make of a not very clean toilette, a shocking dissonance, a very conspicuous scandal." But if some places revealed "the inelegant and provincial masses . . . badly shod," other stretches of boul­ evard were "a dream..of gold," jewels, and rich fabrics, where "everything . . . overexcites you."

The 550 meters of the boulevard des Italiens were especially fashionable and ammated. According to Edmund Texier, "The promenade [along the Boulevard des ltaliens] .. . is a tranquil river of black suits, sprinkled with silk dresses . . . a world of pretty women and gentlemen who are sometimes handsome but more often ugly or uncouth." A lion with wild and messy hair was followed by a well-dressed man trying to pose as a baron. "The dandy displays his graces, the lion his mane, the leopard his fur - all exhale the smoke of ambition." The "majority" of clothes "have not been paid for." Meanwhile, not far away, "The lions of the boulevard de Gand, more sober than their brothers from the Sahara, live exclusively on cigars and meaningful glances, on politics and idling. Hunger .. . pushes them . .. to the asphalt, theatre of their exploits."14 "

"Since 1852, new and magnificent boulevards have been and still are being opened every day and in all directions," reported a guidebook of 1877, which interpreted the development in political terms. "Paris, the city of equality, the democratic city par excellence, has wanted to have .. . a promenade . . . which serves the needs of the crowd and which belongs to everyone." Old centers like the Tuileries and the Palais Royal are re­ spected, but the boulevards, "which only really existed after the Revolution," are more beloved. Carriages, omnibuses, crowds of strollers, "people of all classes and nations fill the boulevards." 15

The physical changes in the form of the city were evidence of the development of capitalism. In 1860, the Goncourts observed that the new boulevards "smack of London, some Babylon of the future." But by the time Edmund Goncourt edited the journal for publication in 1891, London no longer served as the paradigm of modern capitalism, so he changed the. entry: "These new boulevards . .. implacable in their straight lines, whtch no longer smack of the world of Balzac .. . make one think of some American Babylon of the future." 16 It was not the existence of the boulevard that was new, however, although the tremendous expansion of the network of boulevards certainly opened the city up. More significant, as Balzac had already recognized, the boulevard was modern, because it offered the stroller the chance to see the panorama of modern urban life in a concentrated and ever-changing flood of images.

The words. "Paris and the Boulevards" conjure up a host of images for us as well, principally because so many artists depicted them. Following on the heels of fashion performers and spectators, artists portrayed the scenes of fashionable rendezvous, which epitomized the character of modern urban life. To understand the meaning of fashion in Paris, we must also study the changing geography of the city, and investigate those aspects devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and display - the theatres, cafes, boulevards, parks, racetracks, and shops. In addition, we must look carefully at the various fashion performers themselves, and at the clothes that added verisimilitude to the roles they played. It is not surprising that the painters of elegant life should focus on boulevard scenes - with their activity, curiosity, flânerie.