frfashion1-6, Exercise 2: Rive Gauche and Le Smoking

Model answer (check the details):

Why Rive Gauche mattered: it was a leading couturier selling ready-to-wear under his own name, in his own boutique, at prices more people could pay. Before it, ready-to-wear was seen as a lesser product (Cardin's earlier show in 1959 led to his brief expulsion from the trade body). Rive Gauche helped to make ready-to-wear respectable for a couture house and gave a model for later luxury brands: a prestigious name, a flagship shop and a diffusion line.

Why Le Smoking mattered: it brought a man's formal suit into women's evening wear and made the trouser suit fashionable for women. It was a statement about women's roles, and it came at a time when women in trousers were still refused entry to some restaurants and public places, and an old French rule on trousers remained on the books (check).

Sources to test each claim:
- Sales and accounts of the Rive Gauche boutique, press reports of its opening and the reaction of the trade body.
- Photographs and collection reports of 1966 and 1967 for Le Smoking, and the press coverage, including magazines such as Vogue Paris.
- Accounts by clients, such as the Nan Kempner story, treated as an anecdote to check (check).
- The history of the ordinance on women's trousers, from legal records.

Care: designers and their houses tend to describe their own work as the first. Look for independent evidence.