When the first couturier, Charles Frederick Worth, arrived in Paris from London in 1846, he found that the couture was already recognized as one of the decorative arts and was represented in the frequently held government-sponsored exhibitions. Worth himself took first place for his white silk court train at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. By 1860, he had become a supplier to the Empress Eugénie, and his fame was growing. In 1867, Bostonian Isabella Stewart Gardner became a Worth client. In her wake came New Yorkers Mrs. J. Pierpont Morgan, Mrs. William Astor, Jr., and novelist Edith Wharton. When Worth retired, his sons took over the business, in their turn contributing to the Exposition Universelle of 1900. The French government, which had been protecting and promoting France's luxury industries since the time of Louis XIV, awarded Gaston Worth membership in the Légion d'honneur and recognized the House of Worth as an "ancien notable commerçant" ("historic notable business").(4) By the turn of the century, French couture was known worldwide, and American women who came to Paris were flocking to the ateliers of Worth, Doucet, and Paquin [fig. 98]. In the 1890s, John Wanamaker of Philadelphia and later New York was the first businessman to import French fashions to sell in his store, then fitting them to the measure of his clients. Marshall Field &Company in Chicago followed suit. Poiret, Schiaparelli, and many other couturiers soon came to be well known to fashionable women everywhere.

Paul Poiret, born in 1879, began his career with a brief stint at the House of Worth. Poiret was a quintessential Parisian who saw himself as a modernist, moved in artistic circles, patronized artists and collected their work, and thought about the issues and controversies of the contemporary art world. Through the publicity apparatus he developed by his employment of artists, his encouragement of the fashion press, and his highly visible and flamboyant lifestyle, he greatly influenced the development of modern dress.

To understand how natural was the connection of the world of fashion to the world of the arts, it is instructive to look at Paul Poiret's upbringing. The household of his father, a textile merchant, was situated in Les Halles, the great market district through which pulsed the lifeblood of Paris. Poiret discussed his childhood in perhaps the most charming section of his autobiography, En Habillant l'époque.(5) As a boy he enjoyed that most Parisian pastime of people-watching in the streets and at cultural events. Paris, with its wide spaces and elegant gardens, the Palais Royale and the Tuileries, seemed like a stage setting for fashionable women, whose elegant toilettes he admired. As an adolescent he haunted the amphitheater of the Comédie Française, where students paid one franc to see the classics, played by the celebrated actresses Réjane and Sarah Bernhardt (both dressed on and off the stage by couturier Jacques Doucet, for whom Poiret would work after his two years with Worth). Poiret attended the Théâtre Gymnase and the Vaudeville, where he was struck by the beauty of the women and their giant leg-of-mutton sleeves. He went to art galleries, attended openings, and showed his incipient avant-garde sensibilities by preferring Impressionist paintings at a time when they were still new and unappreciated by his family, at least.

As a young couturier, he became fascinated by modern art, befriending students of the École des Beaux-Arts and cultivating the company of painters, with whom he had an excellent rapport. "I have always liked painters," he said. "It seems to me that we are in the same trade, and that they are my colleagues."(6) Before his marriage in 1906, he was already friendly with fauvist painters Francis Picabia, Maurice Vlaminck, and André Derain, who shared his love of bright color. In 1910, he met illustrator Jean-Louis Boussingault and painter André Dunoyer de Segonzac, who became his friends and collaborators. After 1910, Poiret began to purchase modern paintings. He was Dunoyer de Segonzac's first patron, and the artist remembered seeing "a Picasso still-life [hanging] next to van Dongen nudes, Matisse paintings [along] with mine," placed on the walls according to Poiret's personal style. His collection, sold in 1925, also included works by Derain, Dufy, Rouault, Utrillo, and Vlaminck. Poiret had a marked effect on the artists whose pieces he collected and with whom he was close. Dunoyer de Segonzac wrote, "As important as his collecting was the active support he lent to artists throughout his lifetime. He related to them at a profound level and he delighted in their company."(7) Ironically, Poiret also patronized Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, who designed a seaside villa - never built -for the couturier during or immediately following the First World War. In later years, as the architect called Le Corbusier, Jeanneret was the foremost exponent in France of an anti-ornamental purist philosophy, which stood in opposition to Poiret's brilliant achievements in the decorative arts.(8)