Worth the First Fashion Designer and Presentation at Court

It wasn't until I understood that Fashion is so much more than what you wear and how you look, that I started to get more and more interest about it, and before I knew it, Fashion was a part of my life! I am a beginner, an amateur - still learning, still so "green", but someone once told me that "you only live once, so it's not to late until you die!" With those words I decided not only to study Fashion at a college in New York, I decided to open up a blog, this blog, to teach myself at the same time as I can show others 
how amazing the World of Fashion really is! 

And as with everything, Fashion have to start out somewhere and my start with this blog is with the first considered Fashion Designer/Couturier that got to put his name on labels onto clothes he designed. 

His name was Charles Frederick Worth, born 1826 in Bourne, Lincolnshire, England. 

Worth started out and worked as a Draper for many years at Drapery Shops all over London before he moved to Paris, France, 1846 where he totally revolutionized the business of Dressmaking! He was hired by the Drapery Shop Gagelin & Opigez, where he met his wife Marie Vernet Worth.

Charles Frederick Worth [1826-1895]

Marie was modeling Shawls and Bonnets for Gagelin & Opigez costumers. But as she got married to Worth, and started to wear dresses that Worth made her, soon it wasn't the Shawls and Bonnets the costumers where asking for, but the beautiful dresses she was wearing as she was modeling! 

Marie Vernet Worth

As Worth became more famous he also became a partner of Gagelin and Opigez and he tried hard to convince his partners to expand their business into dressmaking. But because dressmaking was considered something for the low-class, they turned down the idea to keep their good reputation.  Because of this, Worth started his own business together with a rich Swedish man, Otto Bobergh, who was willing to invest in Worth's ideas, Worth & Bobergh started up 1858.

Worth was the first Fashion Designer who putted his own name on labels onto clothes he designed.

Worth's good reputation was now known all over the world, he had to turn away costumers and the ones he kept was rich, high titled women and actresses that came from all over the world to get dressed by him or to watch his Fashion Shows that he arranged four times a year. The Fashion Shows were a big thing in Paris, models showed his dresses for the costumers that would pick a model, which would then be sewn in fabrics of their choice and tailored to fit their figure. This is what made Worth so special! He modernized the female fashionable shape, he removed ruffles and frills and used beautiful fabrics to make simple outlines, and people loved this! 

This is a dress he designed for Elisabeth of Austria 1865.

Worth and Bobergh shut down their business during the Franco-Prussian War and Worth started up the business again, without Bobergh, 1871 as the House of Worth. Worth's sons, Gaston and Jean-Philippe Worth, kept the business alive as he passed away 1895. 

Queen Alexandria in a dress made by the House of Worth.

Today you can find the life and work by Charles Frederick Worth at Charles Worth Gallery at the Heritage Centre at Bourne, Lincolnshire, England. The place where our first Couturier was born.

At the House of Charles Frederick Worth, you can for instance find a dress named the Court. Presentation Dress from 1895. This dress shows the shift from the old fashioned dressmaker to something close to the modern Couturier/Fashion Designers. 

The dress is made of heavy pure silk satin, it is hand embroidered with metallic beads, sequins and diamante in a magnificent floral design, it have hand-made lace and like all presentation dresses, it also has long train. Trains, which formed an important part of a court dress, was from three feet to eight feet long by 1870 and even longer by the end of the century. Trains were fastened at this period from the waist and were often made of expensive materials. 

The dress was designed specifically for Presentation at Court, worn by a Debutante. A Debutante was a young women that attended the Presentation at Court. It was probably the most important day in her life, showing that she is now an adult, a women and no longer a girl. This gave her a passport to the most exclusive social circles and a chance to find a rich husband. This tradition started 1837 and stopped in the 1950's. 

Dress by Charles Frederick Worth. 

Presentation at Court Dress by Charles Frederick Worth with a long Trail.