frfashion1-3, Exercise 2: Poiret's memoir as a source

Model answer (check the details):

What it can tell you: how Poiret saw himself and his career, his account of the people he worked with (Doucet, Worth, the Ballets Russes circle), the atmosphere of the Paris trade and the way he promoted himself. It also shows his language and tastes.

Its limits:
1. It was written in 1930, after his business had failed, by a man with reasons to stress his own importance.
2. It is a memoir, so dates, numbers and conversations may be remembered wrongly or improved.
3. It says little about the workers in his ateliers, the money, or the clients who criticised him.
4. Its claims (for example to have ended the corset) are those of an interested party.

What to set beside it: dated garments and photographs in museum collections, the fashion press of 1905 to 1914, the account books or tax records if they survive, accounts by contemporaries (such as clients, rivals and artists), and modern biographies by historians.

Conclusion: use the memoir for his voice and self-image, and use other sources to check the facts.

Care: do not treat the most vivid story as the most reliable one.