When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion

The term haute couture (French for “high dressmaking”) is used to describe both fashion houses creating exclusive, expensive, and trend-setting fashions, and the designs themselves. Haute couture emerged in mid-19th century Paris when English-born designer Charles Frederick Worth opened the House of Worth in 1858. In the House of Worth and similar couture houses, “exorbitantly expensive, custom-made clothes […] were created for wealthy, private clients in an atelier, or workshop, by teams of seamstresses poring over every thread and seam” (113). French haute couture was institutionalized in 1868 with the creation of Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, which “supervised and regulated the hierarchal French dressmaking system,” ensuring the quality of exports and excluding all but the most fashionable designers (114). The organization exists to this day under the name Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (the Federation of Haute Couture and Fashion) and is responsible for organizing the annual Paris Fashion Week.

In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, Satow traces the transformation of American fashion from a literal copy of French haute couture to an independent industry with its own ethos and ideals. Early American retailers sent designers to Paris in order to copy French haute couture designs and bring them back to the United States.