frfashion1-2, Exercise 2: Testing "Worth invented haute couture"

Model answer (check the details):

What is true: Worth's house, opened in 1858, brought together features that became typical of couture: a named designer who signs his work, a collection designed in advance each season, live models to show the clothes, and a designer who decides what the client wears instead of following her instructions. His house also helped to found the trade body, the Chambre syndicale, in 1868.

What is missing:
1. Earlier figures. Dressmakers such as Rose Bertin had been famous and influential a century before, and Leroy had dressed Empress Joséphine. Fashion was already a trade in Paris with a press and plates.
2. Contemporaries. Other Paris houses of the 1850s and 1860s, such as that of Madame Roger or Emile Pingat, were also developing the model (check). Worth was the most famous, not necessarily the first.
3. The label. "Haute couture" as a legally protected term dates from the 20th century, so Worth did not "invent" the term, only a way of working.

Evidence to use: the labels and account books of his house, museum collections of dresses by him and his competitors, the press of the 1850s and 1860s (for example through Gallica), and the history of the Chambre syndicale.

Conclusion: "Worth is regarded as the founder of the haute couture system" is defensible. "Invented" is too strong.

Care: "father of..." claims are usually the result of later writers choosing one man to stand for a process.