Lust for Luxe : "Cashmere Fever" in Nineteenth-Century France

Abstract

...la feuille de figuier de notre mere Eve etait une robe de cachemire.Theorie de la demarcheIn the first "Convolute" of The Arcades Project, taking for subject "Arcades, Magasins de Nouveautes, and Sales Clerks," Walter Benjamin identifies the cashmere shawl as the essential hot commodity of the early to mid-nineteenth century. Quoting an 1854 volume entitled Paris chez soi, Benjamin offers the following synopsis of the lifespan of the shawl:... In 1798 and 1799, the Egyptian campaign lent frightful importance to the fashion for shawls. Some generals in the expeditionary army, taking advantage of the proximity of India, sent home shawls.. . of cashmere to their wives and lady friends . . . From then on, the disease that might be called cashmere fever took on significant proportions. It began to spread during the Consulate, grew greater under the Empire, became gigantic during the Restoration, reached colossal size under the July Monarchy, and has finally assumed Sphinx-like dimensions since the February Revolution of 1848. (55)Benjamin's source conflates two favorite nineteenth-century discourses in his brief chronology-that of malady (disease, spread) and that of orientalism (Sphinx-like)-linking the two through the concept of size (gigantic, colossal, etc.). According to Benjamin's bemused speaker, who historicizes the contagion of cashmere, the cashmere shawl, unlike most other shorter-lived fashion trends, possesses an ever-expanding appeal that seems, curiously, to be directly linked to the shifting political regimes of nineteenth-century France.What might this "feverish" acquisition of cashmere shawls indicate about French society and its consumption habits in the nineteenth century and, no less significant, what does it suggest about the cultural impact of the object itself? Further, what political subtext might be lurking beneath the surface of the story of cashmere in nineteenth-century France? This article investigates the trajectory of cashmere shawls in Balzac's La Cousine Bette and Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale and proposes that the rise and fall of the cashmere shawl as fashion trend expresses significant social and political concerns-namely the inter-related anxieties over authenticity and social mobility-that preoccupied the nineteenth-century imagination. Before exploring the novels, first I will outline the historical context of the cashmere shawl in nineteenth-century France and then consider two key early texts by Balzac that define its cultural context.1. CASHMERE IN CONTEXTAn expensive, hand-woven textile brought to France from the East through Napoleon's campaigns, the cashmere shawl was to become a cultural fetish evoking sensual fantasies of the Orient before falling out of fashion in the latter half of the century. Frank Ames, in his history of the Kashmir shawl, describes the first point of contact between fashion and empire: "When Napoleon returned from Egypt, the generals and officers who had served under him brought back mementoes of the Orient. Among these were Kashmir shawls which they wore wrapped around their waists as belts, and which had been plundered from the Mamelukes, the soldiers of the Egyptian army" (135). From its origin as a war souvenir, back in Paris the shawl was quickly transformed into fashion's dernier cri, in part for its beauty but also for its functionality in the new, simpler fashions of the first Empire, which necessitated warm coverings for exposed decolletages and gauzily-clad limbs (Ames 135). An erotic vestimentary sign because of its warmth and delicacy, the cashmere shawl permitted fashionable ladies to dress scantily in public and still remain decorously covered. The garment that was once associated with the masculine, public domain of the military, its appropriation indicating conquest and power, shifted as it moved into the feminized, private, and domestic sphere of fashion, but lost none of its power. Its rise to the status symbol par excellence of the mid-nineteenth century was precipitated largely by the trend setting and exhorbitant spending of the Empress Josephine, who reputedly never asked the price of a shawl (Ames 135). …