Worth, the man who invented haute couture

Copy Charles-Frederick Worth … The biography of this innovative genius, born in 1825, reads like a novel for the youth of yesteryear, moral, edifying, which ends, full of joy, with the transmission of the firm to the very sons of its founder. Coming from a modest family, the young Worth (pronounced in English: “Oueursss”) learned his trade with a London retailer. He was not bored there. He learned. He spent his free time at the National Gallery , where he lost himself in the contemplation of queens with ruffs and dukes with frogs – later, in his Parisian studio, he would pin engravings of ceremonial costumes from all periods… The assiduous reading of L'Estafette des modes, a Parisian gazette, convinced him to cross the Channel. Which he did in 1845.

In Paris, the clothing merchant Gagelin hired him as a clerk. He soon rose to the rank of first clerk, before Gagelin added him to his business in 1853. Two more years, and a court train…