Exam IV (Chapters 11-14)For this exam you will write one essay o.docx

Exam IV (Chapters 11-14)
For this exam you will write one essay on a broad question:
How do you see societies from the Mediterranean to East Asia
changing in Chapters 11-14? Consider how ideas and cultural
interactions from this era have contributed to our world.
To answer the question, please do one of these options:
Option I: Standard essay with about 4 pages of writing.
Pictures are encouraged but not required in this option. If you
use pictures, what you write about the pictures can count toward
the 4 pages.
Option II: Illustrated essay with at least 2.5 pages of writing
and at least five pictures. In this option, integrate the pictures
with the writing so they reinforce each other.
Use information related to the reading handouts for Chapter 11-
14. You will probably need about 2-3 key terms from each
chapter. Key terms are in bold on the reading handouts. You
may also use material from the Intro to Part 3, where Bentley
and Ziegler make fascinating generalizations about Postclassical
Societies.
You may also use material from our small book about the Silk
Roads or from the recommended supplemental materials in the
Websites and Videos section on Blackboard.
When you use key terms from the reading handouts please put
them in bold or highlight them. To use a handout question that
doesn't have any bold, highlight or make bold a few words from
the question.
Please write in short to medium-sized paragraphs (generally
five sentences or less per paragraph).

In your first paragraph, please provide an introduction with a
general statement about the broad changes you are discussing in
your essay. Mention one or more key aspects of society (such
as philosophy, government, trade, or artistic expression) that
you choose to emphasize.
In your last paragraph, provide a conclusion to tie the essay
together. Give the reader one or two insights to walk away
with. Tell how the material enriches our lives or helps us
understand our world.
Feel free to write extra or use extra pictures if this could add
value to your essay. I sometimes give over 100% on exams. I
encourage you to do your best work within a time frame
reasonable for you.
322
1/ Parisian Haute Couture
Fashion ties business and art together. Ever since Charles
Freder- ick Worth established what is considered to have been
the first haute- couture house in Paris in 1857, French
couturiers have been considered artists, which enabled them to
market their designs as their own exclu- sive property. Several
factors contributed to the development of the fashion industry in
Paris. Skilled craftspeople, relying on ancient tradi- tions,
offered exceptional technical possibilities to fashion designers.
High-quality museums, art exhibitions, and a fascinating city
landscape were acknowledged inspirations. The proximity of the
royal court, and later of socialites’ and artists’ circles, created
sustained demand. Tour- ism benefited from the attraction
created by fashions, and the visitors to the city provided an
international clientele. During various periods, the support of
both national and city governments, in the form of tax cuts on
luxury products, for example, helped to boost the fortunes of an
industry that was considered essential to the nation’s wealth.
The reign of Paris over both national and international high-
fashion markets lasted from the mid-nineteenth century to the

middle of the twentieth. After World War I, the city’s fashion
sector continued to be structured as a craft industry that mainly
consisted of small and medium-sized limited-liability
companies. “Everything [was] arranged for couturiers to work
in Paris,” observed an American fashion designer in the early
1930s.10 At that time, American experts also noticed that the
fashion and textile industries, then employing nearly half a
million peo- ple in France, depended on the leading fashion
designers. At the top of the fashion hierarchy were the
designers, supported by the premières, experienced seamstresses
who directed the workshops that were specialized according to
type of garment: flou (for dresses), tailoring, coats, millinery.
Most of the workforce was female, although some skills, like
tailoring and fur cutting and sewing, were dominated by men.
The workers were organized according to a strict hierarchy
based on experience and skills: premières were at the top,
apprentices occupied the bottom rung, and the pay matched their
places on the professional lad- der. A few dozen couture houses
were aesthetic leaders and innovators, not only in Paris but also
abroad. Their dominance, often described in the international
media as the dictature of fashion, did not face much
international resistance.11 Fashion had acquired a powerful
place in consumers’ imaginations and, by offering a range of
possibilities for representations of the self, had become a means
of self-empowerment.12
2/ Design Piracy in the Fashion Industry
323
As higher-end couturiers in Paris claimed worldwide superiority
on the basis of their exquisite craftsmanship and
cosmopolitanism, the city became a magnet for foreign
dressmakers.13
Paris haute couture had built global fame while remaining
quintes- sentially local. The top stratum of private clients

traveled to Paris throughout each year to order custom-made
clothing. Fashion shows, a practice that started after 1910, were
organized in Paris for the press and the buyers four times a
year: the two major ones took place in Au- gust and February,
and two smaller midseason shows were held in Oc- tober and
April. The winter collection, shown in August, was the most
important, and it marked the start of the year’s fashion
“revolutions.”14 Fashion professionals and press from around
the world traveled to Paris, drawn by the aesthetic attraction of
the city’s shows. Corporate buyers purchased haute-couture
garments, along with the right to reproduce them. A French
salesperson was required to open an account for the foreign
buyer, whose card was not transferable. The purchases had to be
paid for through a French bank, and the buyer had to give the
couture house a certificate proving that the merchandise was
intended for resale outside France.15 Foreign buyers worked
most often through a commissionaire, an agent who ensured the
purchaser’s representa- tion in Paris, introduced her to
suppliers, and oversaw the shipment and insurance of wares.16
Beginning in the late 1920s, haute-couture designs were
increasingly transmitted to foreign retailers and clothing
manufacturers through sales of paper or fabric patterns (toiles).
Foreign retailers had to obtain buyers’ cards from the
employers’ syndicate, Chambre syndicale de la couture
parisienne, when paying an advance on a purchase, sometimes
called “viewing rights” (droit de vision), in order to gain entrée
to the shows’ openings.17
According to one American observer, the price of a legal, or
even of an illegal, garment copy of very good quality could be
calculated in this way: “The exactitude . . . varies with the
price, which varies with the amount of perfection any given
copy house sees fit to attain. A really per- fect copy of a model
costs in a copy-house just about a half what it costs in the place
where it was born.”18 In the mid-1930s, exact reproductions of
one seasonal line of thirty to seventy-five designs by New York
manufacturers on Seventh Avenue cost an estimated $30,000

to $50,000 (around half-a-million dollars in today’s prices).19
The one-time reproduction fee cost a corporate buyer an
estimated 30 percent to 40 percent of the price of one original
haute-couture garment in Paris. There was no system of
royalties for reproducing haute-couture fashions.20
Couture houses generally adopted practices of secrecy that
induced them not to reveal their sales. Until the early 1930s,
only 25 percent of their business on average was with corporate
buyers, who paid in cash, unlike the private buyers who were
generally slow to pay. It was considered improper to urge
prestigious clients to pay their bills, and they often paid late,
either as a way of signaling their prestige or as a conse- quence
of dwindling fortunes.21 Prominent textile manufacturers, like
Rodier or Bianchini-Férier, provided couturiers with a form of
credit by furnishing small quantities of fabrics in advance of
payment and then waiting to see what would sell in a collection,
before supplying more fabrics. Most firms continued to advance
fabric to established couture houses in the event of a few bad
seasons. Such loans were rewarded by the couturiers’
showcasing of the textiles.22
3/The Development of Copying in Paris
224
In addition to the system of buying and legally reproducing
fashions, the American designer Elizabeth Hawes remembered
a “general atmosphere of bootlegging” in 1920s Paris couture
that was not entirely new.23 Paris couturiers acknowledged that
copying started at home, since not only did the copyists have to
operate close to their sources, but the operations also required
the sort of capable workforce that was available in the city.24
In 1929, Lucien Klotz, secretary general of the way: “The
exactitude . . . varies with the price, which varies with the
amount of perfection any given copy house sees fit to attain. A
really per- fect copy of a model costs in a copy-house just about
a half what it costs in the place where it was born.”18 In the
mid-1930s, exact reproductions of one seasonal line of thirty to
seventy-five designs by New York manufacturers on Seventh

Avenue cost an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 (around half-a-
million dollars in today’s prices).19 The one-time repro-
duction fee cost a corporate buyer an estimated 30 percent to 40
percent of the price of one original haute-couture garment in
Paris. There was no system of royalties for reproducing haute-
couture fashions.20
Couture houses generally adopted practices of secrecy that
induced them not to reveal their sales. Until the early 1930s,
only 25 percent of their business on average was with corporate
buyers, who paid in cash, unlike the private buyers who were
generally slow to pay. It was considered improper to urge
prestigious clients to pay their bills, and they often paid late,
either as a way of signaling their prestige or as a conse- quence
of dwindling fortunes.21 Prominent textile manufacturers, like
Rodier or Bianchini-Férier, provided couturiers with a form of
credit by furnishing small quantities of fabrics in advance of
payment and then waiting to see what would sell in a collection,
before supplying more fabrics. Most firms continued to advance
fabric to established couture houses in the event of a few bad
seasons. Such loans were rewarded by the couturiers’
showcasing of the textiles.22
4/Fashion and the Law in France
331-332
French law did not distinguish between fine and applied art.61
Therefore, in the French legal view, a fashionable garment and
a painting were both art.62 The practices of renting dress
models and copying original designs and toiles became
progressively illegal. The Chambre syndicale de la couture et
de la confection pour dames et fillettes, a trade association
created in Paris in 1868, monitored three commercial activities
in women’s fashion: dressmaking, tailoring, and “confection”
(ready-made garments).63 In 1911, the organization became the
Chambre syndicale de la couture Parisienne (hereafter Chambre
syndicale), whose purpose was to guard only the interests of
the high-end dressmaking pro- fession.64 As an employers’
syndicate, it included directors of haute- couture houses in

Paris, like Jeanne Lanvin, Jean Patou, Jacques Worth, Lucien
Lelong, and Madeleine Vionnet. Provincials were not accepted,
and confectioners were no longer allowed to be members. Some
leading figures of Paris couture, like Marcel Rochas and Coco
Chanel, chose to remain outside the Chambre syndicale.65
The Chambre syndicale developed exclusivity policies in an at-
tempt to retain some control over the reproduction of fashion
design. The association adopted a rule that allowed only foreign
manufacturers to reproduce couture garments.66 The Paris
couturiers strictly denied reproduction rights to French
manufacturers outside the capital. French provincial
manufacturers could neither attend the openings nor buy couture
designs to reproduce legally. French manufacturers, dissatis-
fied with this situation, repeatedly lobbied the Chambre
syndicale for the right to reproduce haute couture based on the
same qualifications that were imposed on foreign buyers, but
they did not persuade the Chambre syndicale to change its
policies during the interwar period.67
The Chambre syndicale also tried to make its voice heard
regarding the protection of design in the United States. Jacques
Worth, a third- generation member of the house of Worth who
eventually became president of the Chambre syndicale, had
strong connections to the Ameri- can market. Highly respected
by his Paris peers, he was active at the Customs Commission
(Commission des douanes), and he traveled fre- quently to the
United States, where he often addressed professional
meetings.68 After Worth went to New York to discuss the
piracy issue
5/Design Piracy in the Fashion Industry
333
with American buyers, the French couturiers and Americans
buyers discussed the possibility of founding a joint association,
but all negotia- tions stopped after the stock market crashed in
October 1929.69
The couturiere Madeleine Vionnet was influential in federating

her Paris peers as a way to protect fashion design. Vionnet had
founded her own couture house in Paris in 1912. Celebrated for
her use of the bias cut and lightweight fabrics, Vionnet had
launched her career by copying models for a London shop.70
Historian Betty Kirke notes that Vionnet’s awareness of
copyists started while she was working at the house of Cal- lot
Soeurs under the direction of Madame Gerber-Callot.71 Vionnet
was inspired by the commercial strategies of Callot Soeurs,
whose directors took every opportunity to sue counterfeiters.
Nancy Troy has explored Vionnet’s attempts to build an early
system of licensing her product and collecting royalties,
especially in the American market; nevertheless, her creations
were widely copied in the United States.72 Vionnet’s designs
were not only represented in higher-end Manhattan department
stores; they also trickled down fast and far. In 1931, the trade
press was writing about Vionnet’s “black skirt and bright green
jacket which was to usher in the vogue of the contrast coat now
spread to prairie towns and the smallest city dressmakers.”73
Both the fashion and trade press advertised illegal Vionnet
copies or imitations in every price range. Vi- onnet modified
models at very short notice before openings, and she in- stalled
dyeing facilities inside her house that enabled her to change the
colors of the clothes she was planning to model on a whim,
taking the copyists by surprise. Vionnet successfully sued
copyists who were selling illegal reproductions of her dresses
to Bergdorf Goodman, Saks- Fifth Avenue, and the pattern firm
Butterick, the oldest such company on the market.74
In 1921, Vionnet and the general director of her firm, the
lawyer Louis Dangel, founded the Association pour la
protection des arts plastiques et appliqués (Association for the
Protection of Visual and Applied Arts).75 The Association
brought together creators of all types of applied arts to fight
copyists. They pooled their financial resources, advertised their
activities in press campaigns, and documented their cases. The
Association worked outside consular jurisdiction by appearing
before

334
the magistrate, a procedure they intentionally chose in order to
equate copying with theft. The Association proceeded by
seizing counterfeited designs and garments. Its actions were
decisive in building jurisprudence that conferred the status of
art on haute couture, and it advocated the establishment of
international copyright laws.
In 1930, Vionnet and Armand Trouyet, the lawyer who by then
had replaced Dangel, founded the Protection artistique des
industries saisonnières (hereafter PAIS), which played a key
role in protecting fashion design. Trouyet was president of
PAIS from its inception. The purpose of the new association
was not fundamentally different from that of previous groups,
but PAIS became more influential and came to be considered by
some members of the Chambre syndicale as a parallel
organization. During the 1930s, PAIS was mostly engaged in
repressing illegal copying of fashion designs. Proceedings were
started by the designers themselves, and in some cases the
Paris professional associations acted as plaintiffs. Cases could
be settled either through amicable agreements or by lawsuits.
PAIS effectively reinforced case law in favor of the creators
and, as a preventive policy, blacklisted buyers who oper- ated
outside the law. Despite Vionnet’s best efforts, the copyists
man- aged to sneak into every house, often backed by
international buyers.
On occasion, various French professional associations would
col- laborate in the fight against copying. For example, the
Chambre syndicale, PAIS, and the Association pour la défense
des arts plastiques joined forces with the couture and millinery
houses of Lewis, Caroline Reboux, Agnès-Drécoll,
Louiseboulanger, Patou, Jenny, Suzanne Tal- bot, Vionnet, and
Schiaparelli, to wage a battle against the house of Lebrun, a
Parisian enterprise that sold false labels manufactured by the
firm of Faure & Cie in Saint-Etienne.76 In that case, counterfeit
labels were affixed to cheap copies of haute-couture designs.
In covering the affair, the American press acknowledged that a

part of the counterfeit merchandise was probably intended for
the U.S. market. Daniel Reagan, commercial attaché to the
American embassy in Paris, admit- ted to Armand Trouyet,
director of PAIS, “It is possible, of course, that these style
bootleggers had agents in the United States to whom they sent
faked models, afterward sending forged labels and trade-marks
separately.”77
In a few cases, Chambre syndicale members themselves failed
to abide by the industry rules.78 For example, in 1930, Trouyet
found out that the house of Alice Choquet, member of the
Chambre syndicale, had
335
been convicted for the seventh time of copying designs, most
recently from the house of Vionnet.79 Trouyet used an agent to
prove the facts, and the case was settled out of court. The
offending house paid a fine that went to the welfare fund of the
Chambre syndicale, and Choquet was allowed to remain in the
association.80
Among all the fashion designers of the interwar years, the two
that stood out as stars were Vionnet and Coco Chanel. They
were polar op- posites, both in their business models and in how
they exercised their creativity. Vionnet considered the fight
against piracy a just cause, and she worked hard to convince her
peers to join in the battle to defeat it. But she failed to persuade
Chanel, who developed her own methods of combating design
piracy. Buyers attending Chanel’s fashion shows were under
stricter surveillance than they were at any others.81 Chanel did
not hesitate to sue counterfeiters, and she did so on several
occasions. But she refused to join Parisian fashion associations,
and she publicly acknowledged that copying was the highest
form of flattery. In her Amer- ican perfume advertisings, Chanel
advertised herself as the “most copied and popular couturiere,
ardent sponsor of Youth.”82 The addition of her own fabrics to
her line of original garments strengthened Chanel’s position on

copying.83 Since her dresses were more likely to be copied in
Chanel fabrics, she was able to retain some of the benefits she
lost to copying through sales of the material.84 Chanel’s
modern take on reproduction, combined with her “Ford Model
T dress,” the little black dress that was the fashion counterpart
of the basic Ford car, and her use of tie-in products, such as
perfumes and fabrics, formed aspects of a co- herent business
strategy. Chanel’s position was that illegal copying was the
ultimate advertisement, costing nothing to the creator. Eliza-
beth Hawes recalled, “There is an old tradition in Paris that the
day a designer isn’t copied, he is dead.”85 Elsa Schiaparelli had
a similar atti- tude. An argument could be made that accepting
piracy was the only way to deal with it, but this required having
considerable economic and social capital.86 Chanel had both.
336
Could New York Develop Design Creativity without Paris?
Contrary to the hypothesis that fashion design did not develop
in the U.S. until the outbreak of World War II, when the Paris
fashion industry was isolated by the German occupation,
attempts to build an American design industry actually started
shortly after 1910.87 During the interwar period, a movement to
legitimize American style gained momentum, characterized by
recurring campaigns to promote national styles and incremental
attempts to institutionalize the American fashion business. The
emergence of American design was partly an outcome of the
Depression, which awakened both a need and a desire to buy na-
tional goods, a call that became the marketing expression of
protection- ist policies. American designers and journalists were
also demonstrat- ing more confidence in American design. For
example, in 1927, a New York Times journalist, disappointed by
that year’s season in Paris, won- dered in print whether the U.S.

market should develop its own home- grown line.88 The Times’
chief fashion editor, Virginia Pope, was a strong supporter of
New York’s creative talent.89
American talent was not properly recognized at this time for
two main reasons. First, in the United States, designers, rather
than being couturiers, as they were in France, were most often
employees of entrepreneurs, and they were hired to work by
the day or the hour. A second reason was that the New York
fashion industry was experiencing diffi- culties in building its
own image and creating symbolic capital. Fortune magazine
asserted that the United States already had haute couture: a
compound of famous names, like Elizabeth Hawes, and obscure
ones, like Nettie Rosenstein. The money was there: New York
entrepreneurs were earning as much, if not more, than their
Parisian counterparts, and prices of high-end New York designs
were in the same bracket as those produced in Paris: between
$90 and $300 in 1933 (today US$9,000 to $30,000, using a GDP
indicator).90 Fabrication costs of a dress were then nearly half
as much in France as in the United States, where labor costs
were higher. What the New York fashion world mostly lacked
was self-confidence.
After her period of sketching ended, Elizabeth Hawes returned
to New York, where she became a stylist for department stores
and manufacturers. In response to America’s need for more
designers, she opened
337
her own shop in New York in 1928 with capital provided by the
rich cousin of a friend. She lost that partner’s backing after the
October 1929 crash, but then found new capital and went on,
incorporating Hawes, Inc., in 1930.91 She designed her own
fashion line and was described in Fortune magazine as the
“well-known Hawes.” During the 1930s, Hawes catered to New

York elites, designing and selling high-end clothes. At the same
time, she was designing clothes and accessories for manufac-
turers, which she helped to advertise for department stores by
endors- ing her own lines in the media. Her style was
characterized by soft lines and bias-cut clothes. In 1931, she
showed her fashions in Paris, an occasion she remembered as a
success but that, according to the New York Times, was
received coldly by the Paris crowd.92 In 1932, she com- mented
that she felt New York should replace Paris as fashion center of
the world.93
She advocated that American designers free themselves from
con- formism, a condition for which she held the social
establishment as re- sponsible as the Paris haute-couture circles:
“To be fashionable in the USA . . . was to conform: to dress in
accordance with an example or pattern; to show obedience to
the benevolent dictator. . . . The first American elected fashion
dictator of American women’s fashion was Chanel.”94
Ironically, although Chanel was perceived as the epitome of
fashion dictatorship in the U.S., she herself behaved as a
copyright free rider in France.
American attempts to develop national styles were minimized
by the French press, which maintained the view that while the
French couturiers were taking design risks, American women
were spending their money on American goods.95
8/Conclusion
While historians often describe Paris and New York fashion as a
contrast between art and industry, I have shown in this
examination of trade associations on both sides of the Atlantic
that the picture is in- complete. The Parisian PAIS and New

York’s FOGA shared a similar agenda, working preventively by
registering designs and repressively by blacklisting opponents
and filing lawsuits. Maurice Rentner in New York and
Madeleine Vionnet in Paris both sought protection for their
investments. Their contrasting approaches grew out of the
differences in French and U.S. copyright laws. France protected
fashion design under its copyright law, and Paris couturiers
hired teams of specialized lawyers to protect their ideas.129 By
contrast, U.S. copyright law did not cover fashion, so American
designers had to either resort to design pat- ent law or invoke
their commercial right to protect their brands. Ameri- can
jurisprudence also remained weak when it came to protecting
fashion designs.
The legislators of the two countries did not agree on the
creative merit of fashion design: while the French protected
fashion as high art, the U.S. Congress denied fashion that
status. Fashion copying was not a problem exclusively of
transatlantic commerce. Between the wars, Ber- lin and Vienna
were also centers of illegal fashion copying. After World War
II, the Chambre syndicale de la couture parisienne worked suc-
cessfully with European countries, including Italy and Belgium,
to curb fashion piracy.
Today, the dilemma remains. The strong protections offered to
fashion design by European law have been emulated by
emerging fashion- producing centers like Japan and India.
While U.S. laws contain severe charges against counterfeiting,
they do not protect fashion design. Some experts argue that the
absence of copyright protection is a factor in the economic
dynamism of American fashion.130 The experience of an ear-
lier era has demonstrated that copying pushes today’s American
designers to innovate.131 However, not all American fashion
designers agree that the outcome of this policy has been
positive. The Council of Fash- ion Design of America continues
to lobby the U.S. Congress to pass the Design Prohibition Act,
which it introduced in 2006, that would add fashion design to
U.S. copyright law.132

Exam IV (Chapters 11-14)For this exam you will write one essay o.docx

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