Jacques Doucet, often described as one of the great “old masters” of fashion design, was born on February 19, 1853. As early as 1817, his family established the House of Doucet in Paris, a business specializing in fine linens, lingerie, and later, ladies’ apparel. From 1968, the reputation of the house flourished and attracted talented designers, including Paul Poiret and Madeleine Vionnet, who both trained there. joined the family business in 1874 and specialized in laces and evening gowns. His design talents quickly attracted the attention of society ladies, actresses, and demi-mondaines alike.
Doucet was especially popular with American clients, and by 1895 merchants from the United States were buying his models both to retail and copy, all of which contributed to making Doucet one of the biggest Parisian houses by the start of the 20th century. Jacques Doucet was a fervent art collector and connoisseur, and his designs were often inspired by the 18th-century paintings he collected.
His romantic, luxurious, but eminently wearable creations always had a feminine, elegant, and airy feel. He worked in a palette of neutral pastels, often superimposing different colors to create a play of tones when the dress was in motion. He became particularly famous for his dresses made entirely of luxurious and costly gros point de Venise – a 17th-century Venetian lace characterized by large scrolling floral motifs. For decoration, he favored lace ruffles, silk ribbons, delicately dyed ostrich feathers, intricate beadwork, and high-quality lace, again in muted tones.
Although his dresses were among the best romantic and historic designs, he was not only a designer trapped in the past – he also produced practical tailleurs, which were some of the most desirable available. He was also an innovator in matters of fur, treating and manipulating it like fabric; his fitted fur coats were popular with women of all ages. Doucet knew his market and realized more mature women were not inclined to follow the latest fashion follies; hence his more conservative, romantic styles remained popular for most of the decade.
At the summer program where I work in Paris, we frequently have the children of famous people among our students. I’m generally pretty blasé about the star power, but one connection did get my interest. We had the great-niece of Hubert de Givenchy with us a few years ago. I would have welcomed an invitation to meet him when she went to visit Oncle Hubert, but the iconic fashion designer was by this time an elderly man in ill health.
French aristocrat Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy was born on February 20, 1927. He had worked for various designers, including Jacques Fath, Robert Piguet, Lucien Lelong, and Elsa Schiaparelli, before opening his own Maison in 1952. At just 25, he was the youngest designer in Paris at the time, and his progressive ideas soon found favor with the young and avant-garde; his collections were some of the few in Paris that offered an alternative to the dominating, conservative rule of Dior. From the outset, the use of cheaper fabrics, such as raw cotton, and the predominance of daywear separates, such as tailored suits, skirts, and blouses, were defining characteristics of his collections.
Givenchy managed what few couturiers achieved: universal praise. Not only did the press and celebrities adore him, but traditional, conservative customers, just as much as younger ones, eagerly awaited every new collection. It seems this approval from all corners of the spectrum may have been because he sought design inspiration in both the elitist beau monde of Paris as well as the trendier locales of New York’s East Village. He managed to marry these extremes into wearable, chic, and novel silhouettes. Givenchy retired from fashion in 1995 and died on March 10, 2018.
French artist Fernand Léger was born on February 4, 1881 in Argentan, France. Beginning in 1903, he studied architecture in Caen and painting at the Académie Julien in Paris. Through Braque and Picasso, he was introduced to Cubism in 1910, but he soon developed his own distinctive brand of art described as the “aesthetic of the machine,” already evident in his work of 1913 but more fully developed after World War I. In this period, he designed costumes and sets for the Swedish Ballet and collaborated with Man Ray on the first abstract film, Le Ballet Mécanique (1924). 
During World War II, he lived in the USA where he taught at Yale and painted mainly acrobats and cyclists as well as working on the murals for the UN headquarters building in New York. After returning to France, he concentrated on large paintings of men and machinery, earning the epithet of the “Primitive of the Machine Age.” He died on August 7, 1955.
Maison Callot Sœurs was opened in 1895 by four sisters: Marie Callot Gerber; Regina Callot Tennyson-Chantrell, and Joséphine Callot Crimont. Sœurs (sir) means “sisters” and I find it interesting that all of the sisters in the business were married, as married women of that era seem to have been typically restricted to adorning their own homes, rather than founding fashion houses. Perhaps their career-minded lives are explained by the fact that they had all been taught to sew by their mother, a lacemaker. Apart from that, they had no other formal training. Their initial designs utilized antique lace and ribbons to enhance blouses, but soon they started creating day and evening wear, which was such a resounding success that, by the turn of the century, they employed 600 workers.
In the early 1910s, their clothes were perfectly in tune with the vogue for Orientalism. Aside from their extravagant evening wear, they also continued to make pared-down versions for more conservative customers (often inspired by 18th-century dress), marrying the latest fashions with a timeless elegance.
They were among the first to use gold and silver lamé for dresses and their designs often featured exotic details – especially embroidery, the house’s speciality. Callot Sœurs were known for their crafsmanship and their attention to detail, and their rightfully set a high standard in the industry.
In the first decade of the new century, they were pioneers in devising comfortable dresses that were designed to be worn without a corset. Their preference for unobstructed garments (for which they often took inspiration from non-Western dress) made them fashion superstars in the 1920s when elite customers coveted their simple, yet exquisitely cut and draped sheath dresses. They often draped fabric directly on the body when creating patterns, and were promoters of bias cutting. Indeed, 
The house expanded and opened branches in Nice, Biarritz, Buenos Aires, and London, where it attracted the custom of royalty and society ladies. Aside from their richly decorated sheath evening dresses, they were especially known for their capes and capelets. In 1920 they created the manteau d’abbé (priest’s cloak), a short cape worn over coats and evening gowns that remained a fashion for nearly two decades.
By 1926, the popularity of the house had started to wane because their intricate and expensive creations failed to compete with the sportswear promoted by 
French Primatives painter Jean Fouquet was born in 1420, but there is no exact record of when exactly. Since 2020 represents his six hundredth birthday, I decided to just pick a random day to give him a shout out. So, here’s looking at you, Jean!
He was born in Tours, France, the town where I spent three summers in immersion programs, so it’s cool to think that we may have walked down the same street or dined at the same café on Place Plumereau. The most representative French painter of the 15th century, Fouquet originally came under the influence of Dutch painter Jan Van Eyck. A period in Italy, however, when he was commissioned to paint the portrait of Pope Eugenius IV, brought him into contact with the new styles emerging in Tuscany. On his return to France, he combined the Flemish and Tuscan elements to create a wholly distinctive French style.
In French, an illustrated manuscript is known as un livre d’heures (uhn leav-ruh dur) in recognition of its role as a guide to prayerful meditation throughout the day. They are fragile and stunning works of art. If you are in Paris, the musée Marmottan Monet, in the 16th Arrondissement has a full room devoted to splendid examples of livres d’heures that is well worth a visit.
Jean Fouquet: The Melun Diptych
Gustave Doré was born on January 6, 1832 in Strasbourg, France. He was the most prolific and successful French illustrator of his age. Initially, he was drawn to caricature, spurred on by the encouragement of noted cartoonist Charles Philipon. As a teenager, Doré visited Philipon’s Paris shop and was briefly employed by him. Doré also began producing humorous drawings for Le Journal pour Rire. These precocious skills proved invaluable, when, following the death of his father in 1849 he became the family’s main breadwinner.
Doré soon progressed to book illustrations. During the 1860s, his wood engravings for Dante’s Inferno and Cervantes’ Don Quixote made him famous. Stylistically, he owed much to the Romantics, excelling at depictions of the exotic and the macabre. This is particularly evident from his strange, glacial landscapes in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the grotesque beasts in the Inferno.
Yet, Doré could also be brutally realistic. His unflinching portrayal of the London slums attracted widespread praise and captured the imagination of the young Vincent Van Gogh. In later life, Doré produced some paintings and sculpture, but these are less highly regarded. His most successful venture in this field was the monument to his friend, the novelist Alexandre Dumas. He died on January 23, 1883.
