Fashion Theory, Volume 7, fssue 1, 09. 3-38 Reprints avaliable drecty ram the Publishers, Photocopying permitted by Icence only. (© 2008 Berg, Printed nthe Untod Knngdom. Alison Matthews David Decorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 Dr, Alison Matthews Davi is Lecturer at the Centre for the History of Texties and Dress at the University cf Southampton, She has published on Victorian women's riding habits as wal on color theory and synthetic dyes. This poper is pat of a chapter from her doctoral dissertation, Cutting a Figure: Taioring, Technology and Social identity in Nineteset-century Pari Finery isso instinctual for men, and for the Frenchman in particular, that, in spite of their theories, the fiercest egalitarians from the National Convention to the with scarves, feathers, braid and multicolored cloth. ... Well! This inclination is more worthy of praise than condemnation ... Men think, and above all, act differently according to which costume they don: dress the most cowardly of men up in a French officer’s uniform and then get back to me... ommune have festooned themselves Gabriel Prévost, Le nu, le vetement, la parure chez Phomume et la femme (1883)Figure 1 Draner, Hunchod Guarctsmen, Unaress Unifom, 1854. Copyright, Musée de Armée, Pats. ‘Alison Matthews David In an 1864 caricature by the artist Draner, a member of Napoleon III's elite bodyguard poses in front of a milliner’s shop (Figure 1). With his hat perched jauntily on his head, cape tossed over his shoulder, and long, legs swathed in bright red and blue cloth, he usurps the traditional place of the elegant woman on the boulevard. The caricaturist’s intention is clear: this officer isa fashion plate himself, a military mannequin. He takes his role seriously: he faces the viewer, seemingly unaware of the admiring, glances directed at him by the shop women, whose pale gowns fade in comparison with the flamboyance of his peacock hues. He does not look at the merchandise, he is the merchandise—a living advertisement for the glamour of the French army. Draner was not alone in his characterization of members of the Hundred Guards. Henri Bouchot, who described the different regiments of the Second Empire wrote: “The Hundred-Guards are more like ‘pretty women,’ marked by their refined shapeliness” (Bouchot 1898: 294). As unusual as this image may seem to a modern viewer, the juxtaposition between soldier and woman of fashion was not an anomaly in the nineteenth century, Decorated and decorative men were an integral part of the landscape in the latter half of the century, a part of the sartorial environment that historical scholarship has neglected.Decorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 5 In the Line of Sight: Re-con: ering the Uniform. In essence, the uniform must be pretty at the ball. Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen This paper considers the fashioning of the French soldier during the second half of the nineteenth century. [will begin by revisicing scholarship on nineteenth-century male dress, then use the glamorous cavalry officer of the Second Empire as a case study for the ambiguous gendering and fashion-plate status of a male elite. I will then follow the image of the officer after the humiliating defeat of French forces during the Franco- Prussian war and explore how the Third Republic exploited the army’s continued relationship with fashion to rehabilitate its military image. The inal section explores the material culture of the uniform and its class connotations against the backdrop of innovations in mass technologies of clothing followed by its final disappearance from the backs of real soldiers during the First World War. Writers from Théophile Gautier to Dickens mourned the demise of color in male clothing in the early decades of the nineteenth century. In his Salon of 1846, Baudelaire wrote “All of us are attending some funeral or other” (Baudelaire 1980: 688). To describe this radical shift away from bright color and luxurious fabrics after the French Revolution, Joa Fligel coined the term “The Great Masculine Renunciation” (Fliigel 1930). While he acknowledges the special status of the uniform and the “gor cousness of certain military dress,” he described it as the preference of men of the duty type. He characterized this type by his clothing’s s tightness, and severity of line, material qualities that symbolized his devotion to work and duty. He argues that: ness, This is a type in which the interests connected with clothes have come to represent not merely, as in the prudish type, a reaetion- formation against self-display in any form, but an inhibitory tend- ency of a much wider kind directed against all manifestations of “softness” or “self-indulgence” (Pliigel 1930: 97-8). For Fliigel, writing in inter-war Britain long after the triumph of the monochrome khaki uniform, military dress has become a cipher for the complete absence of desire for sclf-display. It lacks all potential for “softness” and femininity. Yet flamboyant exhibitions and fantasy were central to the identity of the nineteenth-cencury military man, Twill challenge traditional readings of the man in uniform with examples from the supposed century of “Masculine Renunciation.” Other historians of male dress have proceeded in the same vein as Fligel. For example, John Harvey devoted a whole book to severity in male dress entitled Ment it Black (1995), Harvey states that though men‘Alison Matthews David and women had traditionally dressed in many colors, after the 1820s, “men’s dress becomes steadily more austere and more dark, and if one consults the fashion journals, one can see color die, garment by garment, in a very few years” (Harvey 1995: 23). Indeed, if the scholar consults men’s fashion journals of the period, periodicals largely intended for a specialist audience of male tailors, color does dim quite rapidly. But in a study of the visual and material culture of the nineteenth century—a period so richly documented—why should fashion historians limit them- selves to the narrow range of information found in the specialist journals of the tailors alone? Though the overall narrative is not inaccurate, it dulls ‘what was in fact a polychrome picture. Though the uniform is the most vivid example, color persisted in other forms of nineteenth-century male dress, not simply in the bright silk waisteoat and tie, but in the saturated hues of the orientalist silk bathrobe and hunting pinks. In light of a broader range of evidence, it seems timely t0 examine men’s dress practices through a new prism, ‘More recent scholarship is beginning to question the hegemonic narrat- ive traced by Fligel and reiterated in many works devoted to the subject. For example, though his study is limited to England, Christopher Breward presents a more nuanced view of nineteenth-century men as wearers and consumers of fashion (Breward 1999: 24-6). However, despite the fact that military life, dress, and culture fascinated nineteenth-century publics and appeared across the spectrum of literary and visual production, uniforms have largely remained fetish objects for amateur military buffs ‘Though the anthropologist Thomas Abler has published a theoretically informed book on the relationship between colonial conquest and military dress, research has largely remained the province of scores of specialized journals (Abler 1999). Charles Blane, one of the most influential French art historians of the nineteenth century, described the persistence of color in uniforms in his book Art and Ornament in Dress (1877): Now-a-days scarcely anybody but soldiers preserve in their dress variety and liveliness of colour ... soldiers and their officers are still compelled to avow, by their different colored uniforms, their orig- inal purpose, as shown in their style of dress, of slaying their fellow creatures (Blanc 1877: 66-7). Although it stresses the soldier-as-warrios, this quote in fact captures the gender ambiguity inherent in military garb. For the same colors that broadcast a soldier's hypermasculinity and warlike nature made him a porential target for critique and feminization, Color and gender were closely linked in the latter half of the century, and excessive love of bright hues and use of ornament were markers of feminine or “primitive” taste (Matthews 2000). Like the Breton peasant woman, the natives on display at World’s Fairs, or the flamboyant dernti-mondaine, the soldice’s use ofDecorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 7 color and decorative aspect branded him as regressive, while making him the focus of intense visual interest in an era of increasing sartorial stand- ardization.! This link was due in part to the rise of theories of social Darwinism, in which the violent hues of a male animal’s plumage were viewed as an atavistic form of sexual display. More highly evolved organ- isms, such as civilian men in democratic societies, favored intellect over aggressive peacock displays. In the egalitarian ant hill of black frock coats swarming along the boulevards the uniform seemed a crude and outdated macker of virility However, this chromatic brilliance gave the nineteenth-century soldier his cachet. It forced people to look at him, to immediately recognize him asa representative of his nation. Because of his stylish and distinctive dress, he was always under somebody’s eye. Whether he was the object of the al gaze of his commanding offiver, the appraising look of a laundress, or the naive admiration of a child, the soldier had to live up to his status. as image. Unlike the male civilian, the soldier's picture was eagerly bought and circulated in the form of photographs, postcards, prints, and toy soldiers. Military buffs collected lavishly illustrated anthologies of hist- orical uniforms, while boys dressed as miniature Grenadier Guards or ‘Zouaves studied military alphabet books and dreamt of gunpowder and lashing sabers. As in Draner’s caricature of the vain Cent-Garde before the millines’s window, the soldier being watched or watching himself was a popular subject for representation, It appears across a wide spectrum of media, from Maner’s canvas of a fifer boy, to Detaille’s nationalist panoramas or Meissoniers’s reconstructions of historical uniforms, to collectible chromolithograph cards advertising flour or chocolate. One posteard from the turn of the century, La glace die poste, shows a soldier straight- ening his uniform in front of a mirror before taking up guard duty (Figure 2). In this image, the dynamics of the gaze are threefold. The soldier gazes at his own reflection in the mirror, his superior officer supervises him, and the viewer is treated to a perfect military fashion plate, complete with front, back, and profile views of the uniforms of the French infantry. These prints, paintings, and photographs provided a template against which a man could measure himself. Military images were ideals he could imitate in bearing, pose and action. They were not simply fantasies, though they were that as well—a soldier molded himself after images he had seen. His constant awareness of these refracted gazes and the tyranny of the ideal- ized masculine image against which the military man measured himself destabilized nineteenth-century gender roles. The soldier's status as visual ornament brought him closer to a model of female subjectivity, a subject- ivity defined by the internalization of an objectifying gaze.* Feminist scholarship has disregarded the soldier as well, focusing on the nineteenth century as the period when the female body became the primary site of erotic visual interest, a passive recipient of the male gaze. Commodified and circulated like prostitutes, images of women were critiFigure 2 Infantry, The Merorat Headquarters, Postcard, (08. 1900-10. Author's election. ‘Alison Matthews David subject to objectification in a masculine economy (Nead 1992; Solomon- Godeau 1991; Stratton 1996). Though representations of the nude or lightly draped female had existed since antiquity, scholars elaim that they replaced the male body as the beau idéal while men beat a hasty retreat into their black suits. In Le Rouge et le Noir (1830), Julien Sorel declared “Military merit is no longer in style” (Giardet 1953: 50). As Stendhal’s quote attests, the army lost prestige during the first decades of the nine teenth century. The trend continued during the July Monarchy, when uniforms increasingly came to resemble civilian garments. In the 1840s,Decorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 9 the long tunic, which looked much like the frock coat then in vogue, replaced the short jacket known as the habit-veste. Compared with the flamboyance of uniforms under Napoleon, these dark blue skirted tunics must have seemed dull indeed. Other modifications came about as men adapted their uniforms to the harsh conditions they encountered on African campaigns. In such situations, practical comfort won out over elegance, One commentator wrote that troops stationed in Africa had difficulty readapting to European military protocol because their sartorial mores had changed for the worse (Choppin 1898: 110). In his study of modifications made to uniforms by frontier warriors, Abler describes this process as the utility principle winning out over the seduction principle in military dress (Abler 1999: 15). However, when Napoleon II] reigned as Emperor of France (1852-70), he revived the culture of Imperial martial display and reemphasized the seduction principle of the uniform. His armies brought back all of the flamboyance and impracticality that cha acterized the cavalry officer under Napoleon I. Dressed to Impress: The Second Empire Cavalry Officer Representations of the Second Empire cavalry officer provide a case study for models of elite masculinity and their potential for gender ambiguity. “The elegant officer was the darling of the armed forces and the embo ment of military glamour. His presence on the sartorial stage repudiates Fliigel’s universalizing model of renunciation. To his contemporaries he was a distinct and recognizable type throughout the latter half of the century. Even if he were not in uniform, details as mundane as the shape of his moustache or his swaggering walk clearly marked his profession {Balzac 1830). Christopher Breward has proved the usefulness of analyz~ ing stereotypical models of urban masculinity and their role in the prod- uction of competing social meanings and fantasies, from the raffish aristocrat to the polished professional. Though the stereotypical French officer was not specifically urban, or even Parisian, he owed much of his image to public events he attended: balls, parades, and mili His social dash and polish were renowned and he was often a member of the aristocracy, which took refuge in traditional military professions in increasing numbers during the second half of the century. If he were lucky enough to be selected asa member of the Imperial Guard, Napoleon IIT’s elite squadron, he gained the privilege of being stationed in or near the capital. In addition, Parisian firms such as Paule, the tailor of the regiments of light cavalry or Chasseurs, were renowned as the makers of the most fashionable uniforms. During the Second Empire, Paris was the arena where prestigious military pageants were staged and the most glamorous uniforms fashioned,40 Figure 3 Dranor Aide-do-canp of His Majesty the Erperer, mic- 1880s, Copyright, Muséedl'Arméo, Pas. ‘Alison Matthews David Masculine display flourished in the guise of the cavalry officer. Strutting about in his tightly cinched uniform, he was idolized, admired, and as conscious of the eyes gazing upon him as any flirtatious coquette in déshabille’ Another caricature from the 1860s by Draner (Figure 3) makes this analogy all too clear. The caricaturist depicts the Aide-de-camp of His Majesty the Emperor in his tenue de gala ot fancy ball dress. This svelte and curvaceous officer is literally powder-puffing himself in front of his mirror and an anonymous admirer has sent him the bouquet of flowers which rests on his divan. Though the image is not dated, it may have been produced in response to Manet’s notorious Olympia, which was exhibited in the Salon of 1865. This boudoir scene bears a formal resemblance to Manet’s work, in the use of the curtain at left, the sofa, bouquet and the presence of the ridiculously coifed white lapdog, repla ing the cat of Manet’s painting. Hardly a manly canine, its presence hints at this officer’s fidelity to his master, as well as his ridiculous ostentation.® Draner’s final visual pun is the hilt of the saber, which juts suggestivelyDecorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 W from the officer’s backside. None too subtly, the image implies that the aide-de-camp is the Emperor's prostitute, a paid servant who might aid him with more than strategy on eampaig: Draner’s caricature represents the extreme of the officer’s feminization. However, the average military print was little more than a masculine version of the iconogeaphy of traditional female fashion plate. Though I choose examples from the Second Empire, both genres remained relatively stable throughout the nineteenth century. In an 1859 lithograph after Hip- polyte Lalaisse, wo Hussars pose like veteran fashion plates. (Lalaisse’s prints are in the collection of the Musée de l’Armée,) Lalaisse was also known for his illustrations of high fashion and traditional folk dress. In the print, the Hussar gazes off into the distance, martial but seemingly at case in his brilliant tricolor uniform. He is outlined against the plain background like a cardboard cutout soldier, more two-dimensional than flesh and blood. Every button, every braid is noted and in place, delineated with a quasi-photographic realism, Behind him and to his right stands his carbon-copy counterpart dressed in the colors of another regiment of Hussars, In the condensed notation of the print, the artist has shown the same uniform from the back. This man appears without his fur-lined pelisse, so as to present the viewer with a three-dimensional idea of the pattern of the dolman. This front-back disposition is a standard trope in fashion plates. In a contemporary image from the Moniteur de la mode (1863), reprinted in Simon Mode et peinture, 1995, p. 169, two women clad in striped silk ‘gowns face each other ina stiff simulacrum of conversation . The brunette on the left is dressed for a promenade by the seaside, complete with plumed hat and a cape called a visite. Like the Hussar on the right, the blonde woman has removed her outer garment. Her décolleté, flowers, and ball dress seem incongruous against the park backdrop. However, like the Hussars, the two women belong to the same feminine regiment— their dresses are made from identical striped fabric and both sport black lace trim in geometric patterns. Though one is blonde and the other brunette, like the Hussars, they are two faces of the same coin, whether out fora stroll or strategically undressed for the ball. Nineteenth-century ccitis frequently commented on the uniform appearance of female fashions: All these ladies seem to wear a fanciful uniform . . . One fine day, every woman appeared dressed as a Watteau shepherdess ... Three months later, they were all in Camargos . .. Once the rounds have been made and the stock of feminine uniforms has sold out, they create a new model, that circulates in the same way and is eut out, punched from the same cloth for the comic theater of the general public (Bertall 1874: 147), While a fashion-literate viewer could easily decode the women’s dress, a nineteenth-century amateur looking at Lalaisse’s Hussars unpacked their42 ‘Alison Matthews David martial connotations with similar ease. The Hussar was a light cavalry soldier of Hungarian extraction, present in most nineteenth-centur European armies.° The French army always had several regiments of Hussars, each attired in a differently hued and trimmed uniform. One author describes the appeal of the Napoleonic model: It was that the Hussar was already—and remains—with his stylish uniform and his legendary bravery, the perfect ideal of the famous “glamour of the uniform” [prestige de l'unifornte]. To wield a saber like a Hussar! [4 la Hussard] To make love like a Hussar! that is to say always ata gallop . . The fact is that with their fur-lined coats, jackers, skin-tight breeches in showy colors, in many hues: sky blue, maroon, silver-gray, light green, royal blue, dark green; adorned with tresses, embroidery, braids, stripes, fourrageres; their silk belts in lively shades, coifed with their colbacks . .. these young men well-cinched in their fashionable uniforms had a truly proud air (Ney 1889: 28), A cabinet photograph of a newly minted officer in full-dress uniform, twenty-one year old Lieutenant Maurice Baudens of the 2nd Hussars, demonstrates the unabated splendor of this regiment's attire (Figure 4). The portrait was taken in 1871 while Lt. Baudens was posted in Vienna asan adjunct military attaché.” In the mock-interior of the photographer's stuclio, this elegant officer drapes himself with masculine languor in front of the table, encircled by ribs of metallic braiding, his lusurious fur-lined pelisse tossed over one shoulder. As if he were paying a social rather than a diplomatic call, Baudens has politely removed his astrakhan colback and set it on the table beside him. Upon closer inspection, his uniform presents several anomalies, By the time this portrait was taken, the pelisse on his shoulders and the corded belt or ceinture-écharpe around his waist had already been out of use for twelve years, eliminated by a military regulation passed in 1859. The long, draping “flame” on his colback is pure historical fantasy. Yer since these details were traditional elements of the uniform, Baudens may have had them custom-made when he found himself in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the birthplace of the Hussar. As the flower of the French officer corps, he gained the right to some personal fantasy, and surely his well-groomed, confident dress and manly sex appeal could serve him well in diplomatic service. Individual fantasies and historical revivals were not the only elements of dress that linked coquette and cavalry officer in the nineteenth-century imagination: just as crinolines and bustles artificially exaggerated the curves of women’s hips and buttocks, tightly-fitting breeches, belts, and jackets enhanced the military man’s upright bearing and molded the male physique. Bodily beauty and physical earriage were so important to officers that some military men wore shortened corsets in order to give themselves a slim, wasp-waisted silhouette, One British surgeon who had been postedDecorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 13 Figure 4 eutenant Mayrice Bauder, 2nd Fuussars, 1871 Copyright, Musée del'Arméo, Pats French garrison town in the 1860s declared that: “The notorious physical inferiority of the French as compared with the German officers during the Franco-Prussian War may have been due in part to this foolish custom” (Kunzle 1982: 117). Stories and satires of tightly laced soldiers fainting were legion. For example, ina caricature of the 1840s, an officer of the Hussars complains that he is strangling to death as his servant cinches his belt in a gesture which parodies prints of maids tight-lacing the corsets of their mistresses.* The servant replies “Never mind ... you'll be rigged up (ficelé) for the Colonel’s review.” The word ficelé seems to14 ‘Alison Matthews David bea double entendre, for it means both to be tight-laced and to receive a military decoration. This pun on the decorative aspect of the military reveals further gender ambiguity in the appearance of the sold deess uniform were purely for show, ornamental rather than funetional.? Apart from gun and saber caressed with white-gloved hands, there are no allusions to war in Lalaisse’s Hussar print. The uniforms are parade- ground spotless. Like the incongruous ball gown in the park, the print clides the idea of clothing as useful or battle-worthy. Even when soldiers were represented in battle, critics censured artists for representing their protagonists as mannequins rather than believable warriors. In his review of the Paris salon of 1879, Joris-Karl Huysmans berated the famous military artist Edouard Detaille’s Episode de Ia bataille de Champigny: “This canvas doesn’t smell like gunpowder, it smells like strong glue, and above all, it smells like cloth {chiffons}, freshly-ironed cloth that was used to dress these puppets up as soldiers! (Huysmans 1992: 30). A chiffon is a piece of fabric or rag, but in the plural it becomes a pejorative term referring to items of female clothing (Guillemard 1991; 10). Huysmans compares the hapless soldiers to female fashion victims draped like dolls. Gender crossovers were mutual, While military men were feminized, adding a military flavor to women’s fashion was common practice during the nineteenth century. Some women wore actual uniforms; for example Second Empire Cantiniéres or canteen women wore knee-length skirts over full-length trousers, much like the original bloomer outfits, and their jackets matched those of the regiments they followed.!° Hippolyte Lalaisse, the author of the Hussar prints, illustrated a series of fashion plates of soldiers flirting with matching women entitled L’Armée fran: Cantiniéres. However, | am concerned here with fashionable civilian adaptations of military motifs. In his retrospective look at the nineteenth century, John Grand-Carteret noted that military fashions had a strong influence on female styles in the mid-1860s. He mentions the fad for frogging, epaulettes, aiguillettes, and pelisse-coats copied after those of the grenadiers of the guard. He singles out Charles Vernier’s image from the Charivari as proof of this trend (Figure 5). It represents a woman deessed like a drum-major: “A real drum-major,” said Charles Vernier, drawing, in 1864, a woman thus rigged out—*she’s only missing the colback. That will be for next year.” And in fact, next year, the colback came (Grand-Carteret 1893; 343),!! This caricature pronounces its prediction with force of conviction. Whether or not the colback was the fashion item of 1865, the caricaturist becomes fashion journalist. Vernier quotes the dual iconography of military prints and fashion prints. His drum-major(ette) adopts the full frontal pose of the soldier in a military print, dominating the foreground of the image. She plants her walking stick held in gloved hands into the ground like a drum-major’s staff. She has copied many eles uniform, from the frogging and epaulettes on her jacket (set off by a little most of the elements of his et ses sof theDecorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 18 Figure 5 (Charles Vernier, “A Real Drum-major in Le Charvan 1884, Boiothaque Nationale, Cabinot dos Esterpes, Paris, Ome black bow at the neck) ro the sabretache hanging from her waist and the tightly fitting Hessian boots with tassels. She has replaced the trousers with a coquettishly raised crinoline. She has not chosen her uniform at random. Drum-majors led their regiments in parades. They were often chosen from the tallest and most handsome men and ¢1 uniforms were the most splendid in the entire regiment. Indeed, in another caricature on the Crimean war, native Turks mistake a drum-major for a general because of his resplendent attire, In the mid-1870s, women sheathed themselves in cttirasses or “breast- plate” corsets that enveloped their torsos like the protective gear of the Cuirassier os heavy cavalry regiments. In the 1880s, the use of metal braiding and frogging on female clothing had a great vogue, and the same ‘companies produced decorative trim intended for both sexes, civilian and military wear alike. For example, in the Rapports du Jury International of the 1889 Paris World’s Fair, Aliced Picard wrote: ‘Trimming [passementerie] is excessively widely-used. In addition to the delicate ornaments it makes for women’s dress . .. this industry16 ‘Alison Matthews David produced very great quantities of braid in silk and wool for edging men’s garments. In military uniforms it is for epaulettes, frogging, stripes, stars, which mark the ranks; gold braid plays a very import- ant role (Picard 1891: 192-3). The tight band collar known as the co! officier was popular for women’s bodices throughout the fin-de-siecle, ‘The fashion press encouraged women’s military fantasies, and in 1885, the luxury journal L’Art et la mode celebrated the tailor Le Roy's new jersey hunting jackets for women. These vests mimicked those of the Chasseurs cheval, a light cavalry unit that wore sky-blue dolmans with white or silver braiding. As chasseur translates into hunter, women could wear appropriately themed jackets whether they were chasing stags or men, In the article, the officer stands next to the sportswoman who borrows his uniform. The journalist writes: It is the authentic regulation vest, with the fogging and stripes of an officer, and except for the buttons, which would look ugly, the trim is exactly that of the officers of the Chasseurs. The supple knit molds the bust and gives it an elegant and vigorous allure (L’Art et la mode 1885: 446). Asan afterthought the article mentions that Le Roy makes men’s uniforms and riding clothing out of jersey as well. Several weeks later, the journal notes that Le Roy will soon reproduce not only the Chasseur’s regimentals, but all of the army's models in women’s hunting costumes. By adopting these motifs in their dress, society women could prove their patriotism and hope to capture some of the officer’s martial appeal. ‘The number of military fashion influences is not surprising, for few forms of clothing, male or female, could compete with the visual impact and sexual allure of the officer's full-dress uniform. Officers were unmis- takable at public gatherings, and sometimes their uniforms eclipsed the elaborate toilettes of their female rivals. In his novel Cavalier Miserey, Abel Hermant describes the impressions of a simple soldier from the Chi the regiment whose uniform Le Roy first imitates. Miserey admires his commanding officers at the racetrack, a site better known for extravagant displays of feminine haute couture: seurs, Ac first, Miserey saw only the officers from his regiment. There was a first group standing at the entrance to the weighing area . . . Other officers, sitting in the middle of the crowd, with their light uniforms and silver epaulettes, outshone all the women’s outfits, all their eccentricities of color (Hermant 1887: 127). In their journal, the Goncourt brothers recorded that the Comtesse de Greffuble, a fashionable society woman, was perturbed at the OperaDecorated Men: Fashioning th ch Soldier, 1852-1914 17 Figure 6 Unies ofthe Grenacors of the imperial Guava. From lft to right: Campaign Dress, Full Dress, Wintor Cress, ‘Summer Dress and Undress riforms, ca. 1860, Copyright. Musée de Année, Pais because the officer’s uniforms attracted the eye to their trimmings and prevented the women’s gowns from standing out against the somber background of bourgeois evening dress (Goncourt and Goncourt 1959: 473) ‘Though the soldier’s attire was more closely regimented than that of the society lady, they both broadcast their activities through sartorial symbols. Guessing their current pursuit was a game of colors and acces- sories. As Philippe Perrot writes, adapting dress according, to activities and to daily or seasonal cycles was of primary importance to nineteenth- century bourgeois (Perrot 1994: 87-123). Since wearing a ball gown on a promenade or a relaxed lounge suit instead of white tie toa formal event constituted a serious social gaffe, the wealthier reaches of society di considerable time and expense to fashioning appropriate public facades. Like the bourgeois, the soldier changed his uniform according to his activities and the time of day. He would be censured and ridiculed if he appeared in full dress at six in the morning to groom his horse. Military men and their admiring public learned to read uniforms as they read other dress codes: was that Grenadier wearing a belt and a soft cap? He was in his everyday uniform or petite tenue, The same soldier encountered in his high bearskin Busby, epaulettes, and gaiters was in full dress on active ‘campaign. A photograph taken ca.1860 that was possibly used for instrue- tional purposes shows the Grenadier in all of his potential uniforms (Figure 6) Dragoon guards and lancers are a clever example of these ored18 ‘Alison Matthews David variations built into the structure of the uniform. They had special revers- ible plastrons or chest-pieces. For example, a Dragon's regular dress had a dark-green plastron that matched his tunic, but if he unbuttoned it and flipped it over to create a contrasting white (franchant) plastron and put on his best epaulettes, he was ready for the parade ground. The same kind of sartorial switches were common in female dress. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, many women’s dresses were made with one skirt and two matching and interchangeable bodices, one modestly cut for after noon wear, and the other more decorative and décolleté for the evening, While the soldier’s accessories were more often made of leather than of lace, one disdainful writer goes so far as to suggest the opposite when describing the “trousseau” of a young officer sent off to “His First Garrison” by a doting mother: On the thirtieth of December, they brought him all sorts of boxes from the best establishment on the rue Vivienne. There were four complete uniforms; shirt makers, perfumers, what do I know! A whole parade of suppliers filled the town house with its goods. The baroness had counted on marrying her daughter, and Pil be damned if that beautiful trousseau, embroidered with large initials, wasn’t trimmed with Valenciennes lace (Brigadier 1868: 71). This satire on the officer’s lace-trimmed clothing brought from the rue Vivienne, a site of chic Parisian fashions, isa tongue-in-cheek case of class envy and feminization, The fictional Brigadier, whose colloquial language reveals his class, ranks higher on the military but lower on the social scale than his new charge. However, the use of the word trousseau to mark the analogy between newlywed bride and newly minted officer married into the famille militaire is more apt than it might seem.!2 In a Second Empire novel entitled Le Prestige de l'uniforme [The glamour of the uniform] (1865), the uniform allows the story’s protagonist, to marry into money. The licutenant d’Averey is an officer of the Zouaves, caught between two women, both of whom desire men in uniform. The first, Rose, is a fille soldats, a working-class camp follower whose fetish for uniforms leads her into a life of sin. Her obsession is described in slavish terms: “She's a girl with a passion for Zouaves, that’s all. Once they have caught scent of the uniform, women are like dogs, they always come back to it” (Serret 1865: 144). Berthe, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, perches at the opposite end of the class spectrum. Yet she too is besotted by uniforms. Under the spell of the Zouave's tunic, the young woman asks him some questions that read much like girlfriends discussing the trim on a new dress: —Thad never seen your uniform from so close, she said. Your sleeves are very pretty [bien jolies]. Lespecially love that row of little buttons. Do they always stay unbuttoned like that? Oh, no, youDecorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 19 can button them up, can’t you? I’s charming, But I thought that you also wore gold braid on your shoulders, and you don’t have that on today. Why not? —We only wear gold braid on the full dress uniform (Serret 1865: 199), Her inquiries are not entirely out of place, because after their brave service in the Crimean war, the Zouaves were very much a la mode.!3 As his family name demonstrates, d’Averey comes from a line of aristo- crats, yet his family is impoverished. Officers did not make a good living, from their pay, therefore the officer without an independent fortune was. caught between two social worlds. First, d’Averey falls in with Rose, who. nursed him back to health after an injury, but he refuses to be seen in public with her and she dies of sorrow and consumption, After Rose’s death, he gains a wife and a fortune by proposing to the amorous Berthe, who accepts him promptly. Though at first Berthe was simply impressed by his uniform, she gains her prize because she has surpassed the stage of superficial admiration and has come to realize that the man himselfis more important than his charming attire. By the end of the novel, she says “The uniform does nothing for me anymore; now it’s the man I'm looking for, and not his clothes” (Serret 1865: 285). The officer d’Averey of Serret’s work is the marriageable bauble women fight for, and because of his glamorous appearance in uniform he marries well. D’Averey’s mother is delighted by her son’s coming union and hopes he will promptly abandon his military career. In reply, the narrator tells her “Do not rush so, Madame ..-and at least let him keep THE PRESTIGE OF THE UNIFORM until after the wedding—The End” (capitals in original] (Serret 1865: 302). After the ceremony, his fashionable peacock uniform will no longer be necessary to attract a mate, and like a bride, he will remove his wedding, “dress” and retire from his campaign to conquer female hearts. ‘The loss of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870-71 and the uprisings of the Commune tarnished the officer’s image. Gorgeous uniforms were read as badges of useless decorative splendor, signs that the soldier's feminiz- ation had gone too far. The officer's beauty came to symbolize impotence rather than hypermasculinity. In fact, perhaps his arrogant vanity had been responsible for the nation’s shameful and unexpected defeat. Almost twenty years after the publication of Serret’s novel, Guy de Maupassant celebrates the bravery of the working-class fille a soldats in his story “Le lit 29” [Bed Number 29] (Maupassant 1884). Like Rose in Le Prestige de 'Uniforme, the courtesan in “Le lit 29” dies, yet she is given a more heroic character than the officer she loves. ‘The narrative recounts the adventures of the Capitaine Epivent, a cavalryman “who embodied the true type of the handsome officer of the Hussars” (Maupassant 1884: 89). In 1868, Bpivent is posted to Rouen. He struts around the city streets in his dashing uniform, arousing the desire of the local women and the ire of their bourgeois husbands, one of whom20 ‘Alison Matthews David calls him a “turkey” and a “coco.” He “always paraded like a peacock, proud and preoccupied with his thigh, his waist and his moustache. And indeed his moustache, waistand thighs were superb” (Maupassant 1884: 89). His beauty captures the heart of Irma, Rouen’s most beautiful court- esan, and they become lovers. Soon thereafter he leaves her to fight in the Franco-Prussian war, where he does battle and receives the cross of honor for his heroism. However, upon his return to Rouen, he discovers that his lady love is on her deathbed in a state hospital, stricken with syphilis contracted from the Prussians. When Epivent reproaches the dying woman with her shameful sexual conduct, she screams that the dishonor is his. After all, the army did nothing to stop the invaders before they raped her. She tells him thae she deserves his cross of honor, because by deliberately avoiding medical treatment of her syphilis she infected and killed “more Prussians than his entire regiment.” To add insult to injury, she calls him a pretty poser and a capon—a castrated rooster. Irma’ fearless of her youth, life and beauty in what she considers patriotic service underscores Epivent’s lack of valor. In this battle of the sexes, the coquette unmanned the coco. sacrifice Fashioning Uniformity Thus far, Ihave considered representations of the officer class in text and image. During the Second Empire, the materials and construction of his uniform were calculated 10 enhance his striking visual presence. But an examination of military tailoring and the rise of mass production reveals deep class schisms between officers and their troops. These divisions are more apparent because of the clear ranking systems that form the basis of all military hierarchies. By comparison with the dress of his troops, the officer’s uniform was a marvel of elaborate tailoring. An officer paid for his own clothing, which he had made to measure by the tailor of his choice. It fit his body perfectly, and if his body were not quite perfect, a good tailor could pad a chest or a shoulder to give him the proper look. Made of the highest-quality wool, often mixed with cashmere, these full- dress uniforms were luxurious display items rather than practical fighting gear. One particularly well-made light cavalry officer’s uniform at the Musée de l’Armée in Paris is lined with lustrous white silk. Others doubled their collars with soft velvet. While the officer enjoyed the warmth and sculpted fit of his uniform, an infantry soldier from the same period had to make do with the chafing of coarse brown jute and rough wool on his skin as he mi In Uniforms ad Nonuniforms, Nathan Joseph remarks nineteenth- century armies maintained strong divisions between the officer’s dress and that of the troops under his command. The cut of an officer’s uniform recalled the clothing of a gentleman, and that of the regular soldier, designed for practical use, fit more loosely, like a worker's blouse." One rched.Decorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 24 clite cavalry regiment in Britain had uniforms cut so fashionably tight that their wearers were unable to raise their sword arms (Joseph 1986: 95). However, the “same” uniform could show slight differences in quality of cut and fabric. Even something, so subrle as the quality of cloth a man wore made him stand out from his fellow officers without garnering censure from his superiors. No matter how imperceptible these class markers were to the general public, they were clearly noted by a soldier's P General du Barail frowned upon differences between his sub-officers’ uniforms during the Second Empire: rs. For example, writing from the vantage of the Third Republic, - although we were less under the reign of pretended equality then than we are now, I did not want men of the same rank to be dressed better than their peers, to have young heirs draped in fine wool and envied [jalousés] by their comrades, who, less favored by fortune, were reduced to wearing a store-bought uniform (Barail 1913: 236-7). For a sub-offices,a rank where the classes mixed and men who had risen from the lower rank of soldier served with men starting their careers at the rank of officer, such differences would have caused particular anxiety and envy. Whether it was a civilian suit or a uniform, there were clear class distinctions between a garment made to measure and one bought ready-made off the rack at a store. While the officer went ro war wearing the best tailoring he could afford, the military paid for the uniforms regular soldiers wore from day to day and on parade, The army’s need for economy in clothing mass numbers of men drove many innovations in ninetcenth-century clothing technology and marketing, Ir was a military tailor, Thimonnier, who invented the first sewing machine in 1831, and by mid-century it was in use in both military and civilian workshops. Advertisements for early sewing machines often feature an infantry soldier manning the machine. The prohibitive cost of natural pigments such as the madder-root red used for the French soldier's famous “pantalon de garance” provided a catalyst for chemists, who developed the first mass-produced synthetic dyes in the late 1850s.!" After the Crimean war and Italian campaigns, the demand for uniforms for Franee’s 300,000 fighting men was so high thac the Second Empire ‘government began to contract work out to civil manufacturers, a radical departure from the previous system of regimental tailors. Alexis Godillot, the army’s primary supplier and a strong pro-Imperialist, was an early proponent of large-scale factory work and assembly-line produetion techniques. M. Godillot coined a brand name and in popular language, French army shoes and boots are called godillots to this day (Lassarat 1984), Since military tailors and boot makers attached to each regiment had traditionally made soldiers’ clothing and footwear, this shift sparked a debate over the loss of artisanal craftsmanship in the production of uniforms.‘Alison Matthews David The public also questioned the favoritism shown Godillot by the Imperial government, since contracts to supply military equipment and uniforms were highly lucrative, earning suppliers millions of franes in revenue. Godillor, who had orchestrated official fétes under the Second Republic and then the Second Empire, was an opportunist, a new breed of publicist who combined aggressive marketing techniques with mass production, He was quick to use innovative advertising techniques, like the delivery carriages emblazoned with catalog that were becoming an integral part of sales pitches as used by the newer stores. However, in the latter ease, Godillot went far beyond the crude black-and-white prints appearing in most catalogs. His luxury hand-colored eatalog from the early 1860s, preserved in the cabinet des Estampes of the Invalides, confounds the categories of the photograph, nilitary print, and fashion plate.'* Actual soldiers model the uniforms he advertises. Bach regiment is easy to distinguish by its distinctive facial hair, physiques, and uniforms. Even the cavalry horses, who are shown harnessed with Godillot’s products, have coats colored properly for each regiment. After these military clothes- horses were photographed, the negatives were printed faintly, colored by hand, and lacquered to highlight the beauty of the uniforms, for example those of the Chasseurs 4 pied of the Imperial Guard.'” Godillot draws cn the iconography of the hand-tinted military print because it would have Jong been familiar to the catalog’s viewers, who were probably potential purchasers high in the army ranks. Godillot reminds them that soldiers dressed in his uniforms will have the elegant allure of a print by Armand- Dumaresq or Hippolyte Lalaisse. However, the psychological impact of these catalogs goes beyond that of the simple print. The indexical quality of the photograph lurking beneath the cosmetic facade operates as a subtle guarantee of authenticity. These are documents, not carelessly sketched proposals. With tautological logic, Godillot tells his viewers that the uniforms he makes will look exactly like these ones when they are deliv- ered, And they will be delivered, because as the photographs prove, they already exist. Though the photographically illustrated catalog is now so familiar as to seem banal, Godillot’s use of photographic technology to market his wares was innovative at the time, The photographer Nadar seems to have been aware of Godillot’s use of such pseudo-artistic market- ing methods, since in his 1861 “Jury du Salon” he jokingl: Armand-Dumaresq of using his paintings to advertise new army boots and compete with Godillot for the military market. The painting shows foreshortened infantrymen lying on their stomachs and taking aim at an enemy soldier. The soles of their hobnailed boots project into viewer's space. Nadar jests thar the image is actually a: “Model [specimest| of army boots, presented from below by Mr. Armand-Dumaresq. Godillot—Stand at attention!” (Nadar 1861: 36). Nadar quips that military art and marketing had become inseparable during the Second Empi is name and the illustrated accusesDecorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 23 Not everyone was pleased with the army’s reliance on standardized, mass-produced uniforms for its troops. One military reformer in parti ular railed against Godillot and centralized civil manufacturing for the army. Albert Perrin bombarded the government and the public for thirty years with tracts and pamphlets. In a quote dating to the mid-1870s, Perrin addresses an unnamed deputy who had spoken in favor of centeal- ization: With the old system—amilitary workshops—everything was fitted with the new one, there are only sacks left, and you know whether it is possible to tailor sacks. Have you ever inspected our troops? Have you ever taken a look at the caricatures in the Charivari? You would have seen soldiers returning to the barracks three days late, because they got lost, so they say, in their new uniforms, and you would stop speaking of measurement, fit, elegance (Perrin 1876: 24) He conjures a grim picture of an army that has become a public laughing. stock—how were soldiers to fight a war while lost in their ill-fitting “sacks”? In more practical terms, contracting out uniforms meant that troops were issued articles stamped with their regiment, personal matricul- ation number, the trimestes, and year of receipt. They might also have a letter and number, for example BL, indicating their size. The date was stamped on each article because it had an allotted time of use before the service d’babillement would issue another. Ifa man finished his military service before his trousers wore out, they were assigned to another soldier. Civil industry cut, fashioned, and supplied uniforms according to a table of standard averages for 100 men. These would be meted out, and the regimental tailor then did his best co make this ill-fiting, uniform conform to irregular individual bodies. The system worked in general, but if a soldier had unusual measurements, there could be delays and high costs while a new uniform was ordered from Paris for a troop garrisoned in Lyons. By the time the uniform arrived, that troop might have been restationed in Toulouse and more delays occurred in shipping. Military culture had promoted mass discipline well before the advent of ready. ies, clothing and movements—became an institutionalized part of the “modern” military during the eighteenth century. Foucault calls the process of transforming men into soldiers the production of “docile bodies.” Ideally, military discipline made recruits into obedient and disciplined automata, who executed set maneuvers in perfect harmony. As Michel Foucault writes: nade uniforms. The drive towards standardization—of bod- The individual body becomes an element that may be placed, moved, articulated on others. Its bravery or its strength are no. longer the principal variables that define its but the place it occupies,24 ‘Alison Matthews David the interval it covers, the regularity, the good order according to which it operates its movements. The soldier is above all a fragment of mobile space, before he is courage or honour (Foucault 1995: 164). In the French army, this desire to regularize bodies and movements extended to the creation of a unified visual field that subsumed individual differences to. larger whole. As the clothing industry became increasingly industrialized, it became easier to churn out identically uniformed soldiers. The loss of the Franco-Prussian war caused the government to call for massive reforms. The most sweeping change was the institution of univ- ersal conscription in 1872: citizen was a soldier. The standardization and mechanization of the army accelerated apace and many men experienced uniforms and military discipline for the first time, Peasants who were raised in blouses had to be fashioned into fighting men trained to obey orders, to sacrifice their lives for the glory of the nation on their officer's orders. One way to create this uniformity was to select men based on height. The more prestigious the regiment, the taller its recruits had to be. The practice continued into the Third Republic, but during the Second Empire, a simple infantryman had to measure at least 1.56 meters (5°1”) whereas a Hussar had to stand no less than 1.66m (5°4”) and no more than 1.72m (5°7") tall. The height requirements for the elite Imperial Guard were several centimeters taller, and to be eligible for the Hundred Guards, a ‘man had 10 measure an astonishing 1.80 meters, or almost six feet tall (Regulation 1860, foursal Militaire Officie!). Though these heights seem paltry by modern standards, they clearly demarcated a man’s status: the infantry were short, the cavalry tall. When a regiment was selected, outfitted, and trained, the visual effect of this martial conformity could be overwhelming. In Abel Hermant’s Cavalier Miserey, the protagonist is thunderstruck when he sees the regiment he has enlisted in: n this armée reconstituée almost every male Ac first, he could only make our a mass where bands of continuous color were stacked, the red line of the trousers, the dark coars of the horses of equal size, and above that the bright line of blue dolmans and over them the sparkling chinstraps of the shakos Then, one by one, details leapt to his eyes . . . From this first vision oof a mass, where he could only see dispositions of lines and arrange- ments of colors, suddenly came the realization of a strong, simple organism, the revelation of the Regiment which is a vital animated being (Hermant 1887: 20-1). This quote highlights the army's success in creating an optically impressive force during the early Third Republic. The uniform, of course, is basic to this impression. The regiment of Chasseurs Miserey admires is a unit, where soldiers dissolve into abstract patterns of red, blue, and gold, and individuals become part of an cerily organic wholeDecorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 25 ‘Though the uniforms produce a fashionable spectacle, Miserey was less than delighted when he received his own standard issue. As a subjective experience, wearing clothing designed according to statistical averages left much to be desired. Men who had fantasized about becoming, soldiers found thar the prosaic reality of wearing a uniform did not live up to their youthful expectations. In “The First Uniform,” a story from before the Franco-Prussian war, a recruit describes his horror when his long blond hair is shorn by the military barber and his friend’s sister sees him in a far from attractive uniform, He writes: Thad often talked of glory, of battles, of dazzling uniforms, of swift steeds carrying a warrior covered in steel; but in all of these images Thad placed a halo of golden hair floating in the wind ... When she saw me at a loss, in my blue fabric casing, numbered like a package [ballot], my head brush-cut with a huge képi making my ears stick out, looking dumbfounded, with an immense nose. The thought of her seeing me thus made me more uncomfortable than she was when she saw me. With effort, she hesitated for a moment, trying unsuccessfully to restrain a huge burst of amazed, echoing laughter (Billaudel 1867: 27). In his 1889 novel, Sous Offs, Lucien Descaves likened the process of being outfitted to becoming a parcel tied up in string, a conveniently-packaged soldier-unit and a commodity for the army to order about at will. He writes of a day in the life of a new recruit: —Downstairs, recruits! Downstairs, recruits! ‘Thisis the only, the continuous ery, for eight days, from reveille until the lights are turned off: the gymnastics of passive obedience. Downstairs, for the distribution of our equipment... .a supply of army boots [godillots], offering only two or three sizes as options for multiform feet... now for the elothing: the trousers tailored with the slashes of a saber, cut high at the waist, surely for fear of seeing the pair of poles concealed within its legs .. —Take two centimeters off the collar; lengthen the right sleeve by wo centimeters; eross the skirts of the tunic. ‘The package goes off, tied up in string [ficeld|; it is now a soldier (Descaves 1980: 8-9), ‘The word ficelé appeared earlier in the caricature of the Hussar being tight- laced. In the latter half of the century, this and other words suggesting, packaging appeared repeatedly in anti-militaristic writing. For example, a civilian watching military musicians parade through the streets of Paris describes their resplendent beauty, a spit-and-polished but servile appear- ance that rook hours of painstaking labor to produce:‘Alison Matthews David Leather glistens, buttons sparkle, evoking laborious rest in the dormitory . .. They march, sparkling and useless. Their appearance is all glamour and discomfort, The belt straps that enslave them gleam. They are labeled with ammunition belts, packaged [em- Paquetés| in cartridge pouches: their power radiates from them and binds them (Athys 1896: 96}. The government did not always take such slandering of the army kindly: Draner’s rabid Second Empire caricatures of the French officer would not have been considered appropriate thirty years later, Descaves was taken torial for his negative portrayal of the military in Sous Offs. The author won his trial, but others were imprisoned for th 522, Under the Flag of Fashion: Dressed for the New Republic. Writing in 1908, a costume historian described the shift from the Second Empire to the Third Republic as a sartorial call to order: Finally, France, bruised and bowed under a bronze yoke, left the continuous festivities of the Empire, hanging its head. In peacetime, it aspired only to reconstruct a solid army, from which pointless plumes would be banished, and where the silver devoted to braids and piping would be used to buy new cannons of the latest model and to raise a considerable army, such as it is today (Defontaine 190 73). Though this quote insists that the Republic raised a military foree where cannons were more important for offensive maneuvers than ornamental plumes, uniforms continued to be a vital part of the army’s marketing strategy and identity. Superficial appearance carried great weight, and this, tongue-in-cheek quote suggests that the best-dressed soldier earned his stripes: For a soldier, uniforms are of extraordinary importance. When he has a truly martial appearanee, the stranger who sees him passing in the street says to himself: “There’s a soldier who has a good uniforms the French army is reorganizing itself” . .. The captain says to the sergeant-major: “There's a man with the proper appear- ance; let’s promote him to corporal” (Huart 1879: 96). After its defeat, the army needed to make a good publi ir criticism. A transcript of the trial and extensive bibliography is provided in Descaves 1980: 441— owing, and fashion discourse resurfaces in discussions of troops" uniforms. At theDecorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 27 time, men’s dress was theorized as a linear evolution toward simplicity and the practical, democratic black suit, a marker of the brotherhood between industrialized nations. For example, one of the major tailor’s journals was entitled Le Progrés. By contrast, women’s fashions seemed, to be at the mercy of capricious cycles, endless oscillations between wide and narrow skirts, short and long hemlines, without any obvious pro- gression atall. Soldier’s dress was often compared with the arbitrary cycles of the latter: Variations in the troops’ dress, in France, are stamped with the nimbleness, caprice and imagination of our nation’s character. Above all we aim for impressive effects, for glitter, and we forget to take practicality and sturdiness into consideration ... Therefore ‘we get a continuous transformation in clothing with neither reason nor progress; we change to change . .. Iti ridiculous for the army, annoying for the men and harmful to the interests of the Treasury to continue on this path of chance and fancy (Lewal 1871: 34). This text, written by Colonel Lewal in 1871, summarizes the new army’s ambiguous relationship with fashion. On the one hand, the incessant shifts in regime in nineteenth-century France brought about many changes in the overall dress of the army. Successive governments wanted their fighting forces to have new looks that identified them as accessories to the state. Earlier in the century, the French army often altered existing uniforms to However, the Third Republic designed entirely new ones. These costly changes in style, trim, and cut brought military uniforms too close to the caprices of female fashion for comfort. Hadn’t the ostentatious glitter of the Imperial army contributed to its defeat only a year before? Often changes were so minor as to seem ridiculous: a hem was shortened or a yellow braid replaced by a red one, but ina large army, even such small alterations proved expensive. In the reconstituted army, tensions were bound to surface between the need to fashion a smartly turned-out fighting force and the financial problem of dressing an unprec- edented number of new conscripts. In some respects, the early Third Republic heeded Lewal’s call for reform. The new uniform models had fewer decorations, less braiding, anda somewhat more somber palette, Even the traditional rainbow hues of the Hussar regiments were toned down to light blue dolmans and madder red trousers for all (Abler 1999: 40-1), However, uniforms were still subject to the whims of fashion, and frequent shifts in design became in an 1886 book entitled La comédie de la République, Albert Millaud mocks the arbitrary uniform decisions made by the General Boulanger (Millaud 1886: 112-15). In the 1880s, the military hero had a large popular following and in 1889, he almost attempted a coup d’Etat. In the satire he selects coats for the students of the officer’s academy of St. Cy. Caran d’Ache, a popular military illustrator, provides drawings conform to a new model a subject for satire.Figure 7 ‘Caran 'Ache, new coat made in Abbett Milaud, La coméce de Ja Répubfque, 1866. ‘Alison Matthews David of the new coats, complete with diagonal hems, sprays of pompoms and asymmetrical braiding that look more like the product of Jean-Paul Gaultier’s crazed imagination than the efforts of a military tailor (Figure 7). First the General decides that the traditional dolman is too short— his soldiers will get cold legs. He replaces it with the greatcoat, but then decides that it is too fuddy-duddy for young men, and calls for a pea coat. Of course, the pea coat reminds him of the marines, and he opts for the pelisse, a fur-lined jacket which is “more elegant.” Soon he concludes that the pelisse is too expensive, and tries a cloak, followed by an Inverness cape, a garment that is “almost civilian” and guaranteed to please the leftist politician Clemenceau. In his final edict, Boulanger decrees that the original dolman is really the best option, and tells his chief of general staff end all the discarded coat models to the miners of Décazeville. This is a thinly veiled critique of the General, who in 1886 sent the army in to restrain the striking miners by force (Robichon 1998: 38). Despite such caricatures, fin-de-siecle French nationalists exploited the soldiers traditional status as a fashion plate to promote the image of its new Republican army. The luxury fashion journal L’Art de la mode was inaugurated in 1880 by writers and prominent cultural figures like Arséne Houssaye and Théodore de Banville."® Jockeying for position with fall dresses and the season’s new hairstyles, the journal's first issue contained an etching by military artist Edouard Detaille (Figure 8). ‘The print was accompanied by a poem entitled Le Porte-Drapeau (The Flag-bearer] by the rampant nationalist Paul Dérouléde. Detaille’s flag-bearer sits proudly astride his steed, a picture of military glory. His bearing is erect, his turnout perfect, his crested helmet and breastplate gleam with the same bright sheen as his horse’s healthy coat. The print advertises the new Republican flags distributed to the army during Bastille Day celebrations in 1880. A flag was the rallying point, the soul of a regiment, and to be in the army was to be sous le drapeaut or “under the flag.” Because capture of a flag signified defeat, soldiers died to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. After the loss of the Franco-Prussian war, Second Empire flags crowned with the Imperial Eagle were destroyed at General Cissey’s orders, and the army had used unadorned wool flags for nine years. Fragments ofDecorated Men: Fashioning the ranch Soldier, 1862-1914) 29 Figure 8 dour fe, "The Flag-Beerr"in Lt cola Mode, 1880, these destroyed flags were carefully preserved as relies and later reas- sembled (Richard 1909: 104). However, Jules Grévy’s distribution of new flags to the army on Bastille Day was the key point in the consecration of a new Republican ritual, a ritual in which the army performed a symbolic rebirth of France’s military glory and national pride (Hélie 1984: 240), Deraille’s etching in L’Ast de la mode commemorated this very event. Fashion was a uscful vehicle for announcing and consecrating France’s reinvigorated army and reborn tricolor flags. These traditional military symbols were in fact brand new as a physical objects, sewn from clean silk, recently embroidered with the names of Second Empire victor What better venue for this new symbol than a fashion journal, a public- ation whose very purpose is to celebrate and glamorize the new, to30 Figure 9 ‘Aled Stevens, “Her Majesty the Parison," in "Art ce fa ‘Mode, 1880, ‘Alison Matthews David enshrine and sell novelties even as it discredits the old and outmoded, whether the objects it promoted were flags, soldiers or dresses? And the regimental flags celebrated not only a reconstituted army but a reinvig- rated nation. On the pages of L’Art de la node, Detaille used the cavalry- man as an advertisement, exploiting his long-standing status as a poster boy in order to arouse patriotic desire and champion the image of the French army worldwide. Several pages away from the flag-bearer sits a fashion plate by Alfred Stevens, known for his paintings of French beauties (Figure 9). This tinted heliogravure or collotype is a full-length portrait of “Sa Majesté la Parisienne” out for a stroll in the park, probably along the paths of the fashionable Bois de Boulogne. Like the soldier, he Parisienne is on parade. She wears up-to-the-minute attire, modeling a lacy, elaborate walkingDecorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 st dress in coordinating shades of navy, green, and yellow. Like her flag- bearing counterpart, she wears a proud expression. The Parisienne of 1880 is no simpering, rosy-cheeked Second Empire belle. Hip thrust out in an exaggerated contrapposto, she strides forward along the path as she takes one last, defiant look behind her. As she plants the spiked tip of her umbrella in French soil like a weapon, her gesture echoes and reverses the triumphant raising of the Porte-drapeau’s flag, The print’s monarchical title reminds the viewer that though the army might have lost Alsace and Lorraine to the Prussians, Paris still ruled the world in fashion. ‘The international prestige of the French fashion industry spread Detaille and Dérouléde’s message beyond French soil. Upper- and middle-class women from Senegal to Boston admired and bought Modes Parisiennes and subscribed to French fashion journals. As the list of foreign sellers of L’Art de la mode demonstrates, the journal sold as far away as Cuba and Brazil, and had no fewer than ten distribucors in the German-speaking, world. The Parisienne and the journal devored to her were cultural ambassadors, images of French nationhood and style, exported to France’s provinces, colonies, and even its enemies. lithe flag and the stylish soldier who carried it happened to accompany her on her journeys, so much the better. Yet the celebratory presentation of L’Art de la mode concealed the fact that by the 1880s, the French military no longer set global trends in uniform design. As fashion historian James Laver has argued, military fashions are extremely imitative, and “The dress of any successful troops will be copied . ..and any victorious nation tends to impose some detail of its uniform on the armies of the world” (Laver 1948: 25). Because ofits high military reputation, armies of the nineteenth century dressed in French uniforms. However, the loss of the Franco-Prussian was, “led armies of the world to abandon their French shakes and kepis and to jam Pickelhaube helmets on the heads of their soldiers” (Laver 1948: 20-1). Though he carried a new flag, Detaille’s Cuirassier in L’Art et la ‘mode was already out of date. He recalled the past rather than the future of the French armed forces. Useless against machine-gun fire, and kept largely for show, the Cuirassier reminded viewers of the glorious charges of Napoleon the First’s heavy cavalry, not of the now trendsetting Prussian forces. Dressed to be Killed: The French Army in World War | ‘The French army’s continued emphasis on decorative splendor over practicality was a death warrant for its soldiers during the First World War. In modern warfare, the imperatives of French military fashion proved lethal. Smokeless gunpowder, dubbed “B” powder after General Boulanger, had been perfected by 1885, and guns which had a range of 250 meters at the beginning, of the century could hit targets at 3,200 meters by the fin-de-sigele (Dilleman 1965: 1233). Weapons technology had changed‘Alison Matthews David bur French military tactics had not. However, in the First World War, uniforms caused some of the greatest problems encountered in the field. While every country had transformed their soldiers into fighting machines clad in camouflaging feldgrav,, khaki, or gray at the turn of the century, the French army remained a bastion of teadition. Though several attempts had been made to update uniforms, the Army turned not to technicians or textile specialists but to artists and couturiers for the army’s new “look.” In fact, the celebrated couturier Paul Poiret, more famous for his flowing, colorful orientalist designs than for military quotations, along with other designers, was conscripted asa master worker or maitre ouvrier uring the First World War (Riccioli 2001: 302). Though his uniforms were not eventually adopted, the military painter Edouard Detaille designed new models that still did not dispense with the obligatory red trousers. The trademark red trousers, ot parttalon de garance, worn by every soldier represented Frenchness and had become integral to the army’s self-image. The army could not bring itself to get rid of it, A decision that had origin- ally been economic, adopted to encourage the French madder industry in 1829, had become sentimental to the point of absurdity.'” In fact, the pattern of trousers worn by both infantry troopsand officers into the First World War was the same as that used in 1867 (Sumner 1995: 12). The archaism of the French army was astonishing, especially in view of the fact that the garance or madder red hue was not even made from madder anymore, but from synthetic alizarin imported from Germany. And despite the fact that officials knew that red was highly visible and made soldiers into convenient targets, they were slow to adopt other solutions. One project called for cloth woven from the fabric of patriotism. In 1913, army technicians invented a bluish fabric called the éricolore, which was composed of 60% blue wool, 30% red wool and 10% white (Moureu 1920: 114). However, this project had to be abandoned when. war broke out because German chemical factories produced the necessary alizarin red, Red had to be dispensed with and the resulting dull blue and white fabric was dubbed “bleu horizon” and universally adopted as of December 1914. Because of the army’s lack of planning, the new blue was. far from ideal. At the time, photographic film was blue-sensitive, making the position of French troops highly obvious to aerial reconnaissance missions. By contrast, the Germans had designed their uniforms with sophisticated camouflage in mind: the feldgrav was hard co see with either the photographic lens or the naked eye. ‘The same archaism applied to the képi, the loth cap of the infantry- man, Many men were killed by the shrapnel of exploding shells, since the Aépi did almost nothing to protect their heads from injury. The reason the army had failed to adopt more practical metal helmets was that detractors thought the shapes proposed looked too “Prussian.” The protective headgear called a Pickellaub with a spike rising in the center, was not made of metal either, but it typified the German soldier and had long been a subject of caricature.Decorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 33 When hostilities started, the same items that had made officers models of dash and elegance led to their downfall. Their garb was woefully ill- adapted to their function. As one observer wrote: “The buttons of our uniforms, the buckles of our belts, as well as the braid of our officers and sub-officers, all metallic... glistened in the sun and were visible from afar” (Moureu 1920: 116). These sparkling decorations were quickly tarnished in acid baths, and wool stripes replaced gold and silver braiding. ‘The ornaments that had been the French army’s glory finally disappeared in the mud of trench warfare. The cavalry troops, once the jewel of the Napoleonic army, were the most ineffective and outdated regiments of all, their training in saber charges useless against machine-gun fire. In the wake of the First World War, the decorated man was gone for good. Contemporary French uniforms have kept the distinctive képi but have a simple, stiff military cur that is in tune with the armies of the rest of the world. However, even today, couture takes the fore in the production of a French military “look” on the international stage. The army’s uniforms are made by the fashion designer Pierre Cardin, a tailor who got his start making womenswear. current Acknowledgments would like to thank all those who made this project possible, in particular the incredibly helpful and knowledgeable curatorial and library staff at the Musée de l’Armée, Paris. The comments of Michael Marrinan, Lou Roberts, and my anonymous reviewer have proved invaluable. 1, “There are what we may perhaps regard as vestiges of the more prim- itive state in which men were the more decorative, women the more modest, sex. Even the most gay feminine attire scarcely equals the .gorgeousness of certain military uniforms” (Fltigel 1930: 104). 2. Inpart, this peacock-like display is explained by the fact that visibility was low in battle situations until smokeless gunpowder was developed in 1885, However, even after this invention, the French army favored brilliant effect over dull camouflage. 3. While the literature on female objectification is too extensive to sum- marize here, Jon Stratton provides a good account of mid-ni th century objectification in “The Spectacularisation of the Female Body,” Chapter 3 of Stratton 1996. 4, This stereotype was cross-cultural. The hero of Ouida’s popular novel Under Two Flags: A Story of the Household and the Desert (Ouida 1867) is a member of the Royal Household Guards. His nickname is “Beauty.” The French version was entitled Cigarette after the novel’s34 10. lL. 12. 13. 14. 15. ‘Alison Matthews David heroine, a masculine canteen woman who smokes, rides astride and fights with her troops. Its visual structure echoes that of later images of courtesans in front of their mirrors, as in Maner’s painting of Nana (1877). Sce Chapter 3 of Abler 1999: 23-46, “Hussars: Horsemen of the Eastern Frontier.” Baudens became a General in 1898—see Album Maurice Levert 995.22 in the For examples, see Steele 1999. I speak here of the officer’s dress uniform or grande tene. Both officers and soldiers owned several uniforms, for working and general wear (Richard 1885-9), Jules Richard’s Types et Uniformes (1885-9), illustrated by Detaille depicts soldiers working in their petite tenue and tenue de campagne. This was a popular publication, issued in luxury and less-expensive editions. Actual women’s uniforms were designed, if not worn during the French Revolution (Ribeiro 1988: 88-9). The colback of Vernier’s caricature could have been one of two kinds of military headgear. In French it is used for both the high bearskin headdress or Busby worn by Grenadiers, and the astrakhan model ‘worn by Hussars. In this case, it is probably the more flamboyant Busby, since Grenadiers most often appeared as drum-majors. The author appears to be making another pun: the title of the story “Le premier garnison” plays on the double meaning of garnison, which literally means a military garrison, However, the verb garnir can be translated as “to supply or equip” but also as “to embellish, to decorate, to adorn.” The officer’s lavish “trousseau” is both equipment and adornment. ‘Their distinctive infantry uniforms were copied in several forms. The officers had European-inspired uniforms with elaborate orientalizing braiding on the sleeves and back, bur the troops were renowned for their distinctive “Turkish” dress. They wore turbans or chéchias, blue boleros trimmed with yellow braid, and baggy knee length red drawers for ease of movement. Stylish women adopted their jaunty boleros, known as Zouave jackets in the fashion literature, some American troops wore modified Zouave uniforms during the Civil war, and the Pope even formed his own regiment of Papal Zouaves. One British book of men’s fancy-dress costumes from the 1860s proposes the Zouave uniform as an appropriate and appealing ballroom disguise for its readers (see Abler 1999: 99-110). Despite these differences, the uniforms of regular troops followed general trends in male fashion: it is possible to distinguish soldiers from different decades by the cut oftheir jackets, shape of their hats, and the general silhouette they present to the viewer. The first colors developed were mauve and magenta, but a whole spectrum soon followed. Though the pigments were first used for Musée de PArmée,Decorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852-1914 35 female clothing, magenta was named by the British in support of the French victory in that Italian city in 1859, Other colors were named after French military victories, for example *Solferino” purple had a brief vogue. Synthetic madder red was produced by 1870 and indigo was finally developed by the Germans at the turn of the century. 16, There is another catalog in black and white showing the tents, leather belts, harnesses, or “Petit équipement” etc. furnished by Godillot. The photographer and models are unknown. 17, Companies still use this technique in magazines. One of Nike’s 2000 advertisement campaigns features black-and-white photographs of anonymous athletes wearing brightly colored garments. The athletic garments have been coated with slick glossy surfaces, smooth to the touch, in contrast with the matt, monochrome surfaces of their wearer's faces and bodies. In both Godillor’s eatalog and the Nike advertisements, this technique emphasizes the desirability of the commodities and the bland anonymity of the wearers encourages the viewer to imagine himself in their place. 18, A yearly subscription to L’Art de la mode cost the tidy sum of 100 franes, whereas the average subscription price of a fashion journal in the late nineteenth century generally ran from 10 to 15 franes per year, depending on which illustrations and supplements the reader received. The title later changed to L’Art et la mode. 19, Far-right politicians and the military establishment were particulacly vociferous about conserving the pantalon de garanee. In 1913, Minister of War Eugene Etienne exclaimed “ Never! Red trousers are France!* (Sumner 1995: 14) bolish red trousers? References Abler, Thomas. 1999. 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