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The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021Gowns and Mansions:French Fashion in New York Homesduring the Late Nineteenth CenturyElizabeth L. BlockAbstractDuring the late nineteenth century, fancy dress balls, held regularly by society leadersin their conspicuous homes, stimulated an influx of U.S. orders at Parisian couturehouses. In this article, the soirées are viewed as staged events that were activated bythe fashionable garments worn by the hosts and guests. The text considers previousstudies on fancy dress balls but resituates the events within the literature of materialculture and interior design history. The aim is to consider the houses as stages fordaily life by connecting the historical references in both the architecture and the fancydress balls through the medium of fashion employed by the wearers. The articleexamines the often perplexing choices by the homeowners to emulate royal Frencharchitecture and dress. Theories of conspicuous consumption by the late nineteenthcentury economist, Thorstein Veblen, and the twentieth century sociologist, PierreBourdieu, help elucidate the behavior.7

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021IntroductionWhen Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor (1830–1908) greeted her guests in thedrawing room of her new mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York, she did so standingin front of the nearly seven–foot–tall portrait of her (Figure 1) by Charles Auguste–Émile Carolus–Duran (1837–1917). Painted in 1890 when Astor was 59 years oldand the established doyenne of New York society, the picture became a keytouchstone in the French Renaissance château–style house she commissioned in 1893from the architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827–1895) and moved into on itscompletion in 1896.1Figure 1:Mrs. William Astor(Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor),Charles Auguste–Émile Carolus–Duran,1890, Oil on Canvas, 212.1 x 107.3 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,New York, New York, United States,Gift of R. Thornton Wilson andOrme Wilson, 1949, 49.4.Chauncey Hotchkiss, “Mrs. Astor at Home,” Magazine Section, The New York World, New York,New York, United States, 8 January 1905, p. 1.Anonymous, “Mrs. Astor Quits as Society Head,” The Los Angeles Herald, Los Angeles,California, United States, 21 October 1906, p. 8.Anonymous, “Mrs. W. Astor, Society Leader, Dies in Old Age,” The Los Angeles Herald, LosAngeles, California, United States, 31 October 1908, p. 1.18

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021Set against a nondescript background, in the painting Astor wears a dark blue velvetgown with white lace detailing with matching feather fan and headdress. A costumefor a fancy dress ball, the dress incorporated elements of seventeenth century style,including the pointed lace collar with matching lace cuffs.2 Taking up the majority ofthe monumental canvas, the painting may well be considered a portrait of the gown.The pride of place that the canvas occupied in the house and the close identificationthat Astor attached to it presents productive lines of inquiry about the role of fashioninside the mansions erected during the building boom along Fifth Avenue during the1880s and 1890s.This article contends that women wearing costly, elaborate gowns and masqueradecostumes effectively activated the newly built homes by filling the homes with thefabrics and cachet of Parisian couture. The actual wearing of clothing, anunderstudied component of its consumption, and the interrelationship betweeninterior spaces and fashion drive the inquiry.3 Hostesses and their guests inserted thepowerful institution of French fashion into elite architectural structures. The gownsexerted significant work by displaying status and wealth, but in their volume of fabricsand jewels, they also contended with the vast square footage, tall ceilings, expertlycarved furniture, and outfitting of the rooms. With many of the homes’ structures and2The ball at which she first wore the outfit has not yet been determined, but a similar dress isdescribed in:Anonymous, “Mrs. Astor’s Dresses,” The Richmond Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia, United States,24 November 1889, p. 7.For the painting, see:Marie Simon, Fashion in Art: The Second Empire and Impressionism, Zwemmer, London,England, 1995, pp. 102–103.3Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson, Editors, Body Dressing, Berg Publishers, Oxford,Oxfordshire, England, 2001, pp. 1–10.Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, Polity Press,Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, 2015, p. 5.See also:Sophie Woodward, Why Women Wear What They Wear, Berg Publishers, Oxford, Oxfordshire,England, 2007, pp. 1–8.For fashion and interior design, see:Maureen E. Montgomery, Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith Wharton’s NewYork, Routledge, New York, New York, United States, 1998, pp. 65–72.Nancy J. Troy, Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion, MIT Press, Cambridge,Massachusetts, United States, 2003, p. 336.John Potvin, “The Velvet Masquerade: Fashion, Interior Design and the Furnished Body,” inFashion, Interior Design, and the Contours of Modern Identity, Alla Myzelev and John Potvin,Editors, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, Surrey, England, 2010, p. 9.Joel Sanders, “The Future of Cross–Disciplinary Practice,” in Shaping the American Interior:Structures, Contexts and Practices, Paula Lupkin and Penny Sparke, Editors, Routledge, New York,New York, United States, 2018, pp. 195–197.9

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021decor modeled after historical French châteaux, the result is often paradoxical choicesand juxtapositions. In the case of fancy dress balls, the garments provided a vehiclefor the wearer to masquerade or embody a character, operating within the theatricalitythat pervaded social life. The act of women first viewing the opera and then wearingspecially crafted clothing to a ball, infused new meaning into the architecturalstructures, effectively transforming them into staged arenas.Curiously, many of the costumes were inspired by French royal figures who wereultimately ousted or killed, an ironic association with the monarchy for wealthy U.S.citizens whose families became rich from capitalistic ventures. Following the theoryof conspicuous consumption by late nineteenth century economist Thorstein Veblen(1857–1929), their emulation of royal refinement was pursued at all costs, desperationand discomfort be damned. 4 The question of how conscious they were of theirextreme consumption remains an open one. For Veblen and twentieth centurysociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), the behavior was unconscious, andBourdieu assigns it to the habitus, a system of cultural forces that influenced consumeractions.5 In the context of the Astors, Vanderbilts, and their compatriots, we cannotdetermine how aware they were of their striving for certain material goods and status,but we can access the paradoxes of some of their choices to provide a sense of thecomplexities surrounding them.The homes, gowns, and housewarming balls of Alva Smith Vanderbilt (1853–1933)in 1883 and Caroline Astor in 1896 provide apt case studies because they representthe two main categories of Veblen’s conception of the leisure class——those whoinherit wealth and those who exert effort to earn wealth.6 The Astors were a respectedand old Dutch settler family, whereas the Vanderbilts were considered arriviste.Caroline Astor’s father was a Schermerhorn, descended from the settlers who cameto America from Holland during the late seventeenth century. Although the familybuilt a fortune through mercantile and real estate businesses, by the nineteenthcentury, the way in which it had been earned was separated by a sufficient amount oftime, and the family was more associated with their cultural capital, as Bourdieu termsThorstein Veblen, “The Theory of the Leisure Class” in The Collected Works of ThorsteinVeblen, Volume 1, Routledge, London, England, 1994, p. 85.Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, New Extended4Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, 2018, pp. 95–96.5See:Andrew B. Trigg, “Veblen, Bourdieu, and Conspicuous Consumption,” Journal of EconomicIssues, Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, Volume 35, Issue 1, March2001, pp. 108–109.6Veblen, op cit., p. 29.10

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021it, rather than cash.7 At this point, the family had put out a few generations of educated,privileged members. The Vanderbilts, on the other hand, although also descendedfrom seventeenth century settlers, had made money through new shipping andrailroad enterprises and were continuously trying to counteract the perception that thefamily, by one account, was “raised to social eminence by vulgarly–gotten wealth.”8Architecture and FashionThe 1870s through 1890s were booming times in the interrelated industries in theUnited States of elite architecture, interior decoration, and fashion. Old–money andnew–money families sought to mark their territory and display their taste on upperFifth Avenue in New York, as they were doing elsewhere in places like Newport,Rhode Island and Chicago, Illinois, by erecting showpiece homes.9 Astor after Astorand Vanderbilt after Vanderbilt commissioned European–inspired mansions fromprominent architects and interior designers. One familial architectural lineupcomprised the following: William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) and Maria LouisaKissam Vanderbilt’s (1821–1896) (and of their two daughters, Margaret Louisa andEmily Thorn’s) “Triple Palace” at 640 and 642 Fifth Avenue and 2 West 52nd Street)was designed by the architectural firm Trench and Snook with interior decoration byHerter Brothers, and was completed in 1882. The same year, William KissamVanderbilt (1849–1920) and Alva Smith Vanderbilt’s French Renaissance mansion at660 Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street was finished, with architecture by Hunt and withmultiple interior designers (Figure 2).Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociologyof Education, John Richardson, Editor, Richard Nice, Translator, Greenwood, New York, NewYork, United States, 1986, pp. 241–258.8Anonymous, “A Social Barrier Broken Down,” The Daily Evening Bulletin, San Francisco,California, 2 April 1883, Unpaginated.9Robert A.M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman, New York 1880: Architecture andUrbanism in the Gilded Age, Monacelli Press, New York, New York, United States, 1999, pp. 570–600.Greg King, A Season of Splendor: The Court of Mrs. Astor in Gilded Age New York, John Wileyand Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, United States, 2009, pp. 141–164.711

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021Figure 2:Home of William Kissam Vanderbilt and Alva Smith Vanderbilt,660 Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street, New York, New York, United States,by Architect Richard Morris Hunt,Photographed by H.N. Tiemann and Company, 1898,The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art,Prints and Photographs Collection, The New York Public Library,New York, New York, United States, b17095984.12

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021Alice Claypoole Gwynne Vanderbilt (1845–1934) and Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843–1899) commissioned a French château–style home on Fifth Avenue and 57th Streetthe same year.10 Some architectural firms included design services, but many homeswere decorated by U.S. firms such as Herter Brothers and George A. Schastey andCompany and French firms like that of Jules Allard et fils. The field of interiordecoration was in the process of becoming professionalized during the last decadesof the century.11 Developments in the field paralleled those of couture, with designerssigning or labeling their work and consolidating production and sales in their shop(Figure 3).1210Stern, op cit., pp. 578–600.Michael C. Kathrens, Great Houses of New York, 1880–1930, Acanthus Press, New York, NewYork, United States, 2005, pp. 26–42.Wayne Craven, Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society, W.W. Norton, NewYork, New York, United States, 2009, pp. 81–149.King, op cit., pp. 142–151.Thomas Mellins, “Architecture in Gilded Age New York,” in Gilded New York: Design, Fashion,and Society, Donald Albrecht and Jeannine Falino, Editors, Monacelli Press, New York, New York,United States, 2013, pp. 138–141.See also:Anonymous, “The Architectural Progress of New York City,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, NewYork, New York, United States, Volume 15, Number 4, April 1883, pp. 389–390.11Penny Sparke, “The Domestic Interior and the Construction of Self: The New York Homes ofElsie de Wolfe,” in Interior Design and Identity, Susie McKellar and Penny Sparke, Editors,Manchester University Press, Manchester, England, 2004, p. 73.Penny Sparke, “Elsie de Wolfe: A Professional Interior Decorator,” in Paula Lupkin and PennySparke, Editors, Shaping the American Interior: Structures, Contexts and Practices, Routledge, NewYork, New York, United States, 2018, pp. 47–58.12Ibid., Sparke, 2018, p. 50.13

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021Figure 3:Fashion Plate, Illustrated by Marie de Solar,Published in L’Art et la Mode, Paris, France, 1883,The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art,Prints and Photographs Collection, The New York Public Library,New York, New York, United States, b17566468.14

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021In 1875, Boston’s Cottage Hearth magazine reported on a “Paris mania” in U.S.furnishings, but the styles of the homes are best described as “historiated”——pastichesthat evoke historical styles, in this case, royal European, without a firm devotion toauthenticity.13 Architectural historian Bruno Pons refers to the “salon spirit” of Frenchsociety that imbued French domestic architecture and that was adopted by elite U.S.citizens.14 But the transmission came through with static, and the homes ended up aspatchworks of multiple period styles. Alva Smith Vanderbilt went all in onmismatched French styles in both the Fifth Avenue home and Marble House inNewport, Rhode Island, built by Hunt and decorated by Allard and Sons during1888–1892. There, the exterior was inspired by the Petit Trianon at Versailles, butthe so–called Gothic style she favored for the interior actually encompassed art andfurnishings from the twelfth through sixteenth centuries.15 The grand ball at the NewYork home in 1883 was French mania writ large.Anonymous, “A Paris Mania,” Cottage Hearth, Boston, Massachusetts, United States, June 1875,p. 161.14Bruno Pons, French Period Rooms, 1650–1800: Rebuilt in England, France, and the Americas,Ann Sautier–Greening, Translator, Faton Éditions, Dijon, France, 1995, pp. 96, 158.15Virginia Brilliant, Paul F. Miller, and Françoise Barbe, Gothic Art in the Gilded Age: Medievaland Renaissance Treasures in the Gavet–Vanderbilt–Ringling Collection, The John and MableRingling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, United States, 2009, p. xiii.Henry Balch Ingram, “Mr. Vanderbilt’s Marble Hall,” Frank Leslie’s Weekly, New York, NewYork, United States, 27 February 1892, p. 65.1315

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021The Vanderbilt Ball, 1883The ways in which fashion activated the newly erected and designed homes alongFifth Avenue is best examined through housewarming events, often elaborate ballsinspired by the theatre. William Kissam Vanderbilt 16 and Alva Smith Vanderbiltmoved into their new mansion at 660 Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street in 1883. The house,which cost several million dollars to build, was well known to be their effort toestablish themselves in high society, having formerly been derided as nouveau riche.Alva Smith’s family was from Mobile, Alabama——“plain Miss Smith, mind you,”wrote one reporter17——but both her parents’ families held money and stature in localand national government.18 At their cotton plantations, they enslaved laborers, and inher memoir, Alva Smith Vanderbilt recalled that her mother had “inherited”workers. 19 She remembered a servant named Monroe who had been previouslyenslaved by her mother and with whom Alva would go to the market after the familymoved from Mobile to New York.20 She wrote of her mother’s avid preference ofFrench dress for herself and her daughters, especially from Madame Olympe(Olympe Boisse, 1831–1909), a well–known dressmaker in New Orleans, Louisianawho imported French garments and also created her own designs.21 Alva recalled thatas a child she resented having been made “a pioneer in the matter of clothes,” as wellas the attention she received for her “extraordinary amount of hair.”22 As an adult,however, especially during the years of her two marriages, her interest in a richappearance was undeniable.16William Kissam Vanderbilt was the grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877).Anonymous, “Her Millions for a Coronet,” The Redwood Gazette, Redwood Falls, Minnesota,United States, 7 November 1895, p. 7.Sylvia D. Hoffert, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women’s Rights, IndianaUniversity Press, Bloomington, Indiana, United States, 2012, p. 1.18Alva E. Belmont, Alva E. Belmont Memoir, Matilda Young Papers, Rare Book Manuscript andSpecial Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States, p. 6.19Ibid., p. 10.20Ibid., pp. 33, 38.21Ibid., pp. 29–30.22Ibid., p. 32.1716

The Journal of Dress HistoryVolume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021Despite Alva’s childhood summers in Newport, Rhode Island as well as France,Austria, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, her family’s fortunes changed when she was ateenager and when her father’s businesses declined in about 1875. From then onward,both she and William Kissam Vanderbilt sought approval from the old–moneyfamilies like the Astors, Schermerhorns, Stuyvesants, and Van Cortlandts and courtednewspaper editors to help the cause.23 The four–story limestone house at 660 FifthAvenue was conceived as a French Renaissance “petit château” in the style of FrançoisI, a deliberate choice that associated it with French royalty and that would be copiedby a number of elite homes in New York, including the Henry G. Marquand (1819–1902) House on

The Journal of Dress History Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021 6 Welcome Dear ADH Members and Friends, I hope you enjoy reading this issue of The Journal of Dress History, which includes three academic articles, 18 book reviews