PLATE III
If we have hardly showed anything but men and women, women and men, for a long time; if we neglected to separately show different objects which are useful for the toilette or decoration, it’s that when we tried last year, many Ladies, apparently fearing that we were busying ourselves too much with these objects, begged us by letter to return only to dress. They cried to us unceasingly, “Caps, gowns, suits.” How to resist them, we who desire nothing but to satisfy them! But, however, details of objects must sometimes be shown to content a number of our Subscribers, who have testified to having a very great desire for them.
In this IIIrd Plate we have shown a Ladies’ belt Buckle; a button framed with diamonds, with a cameo in the middle, for men’s coats or Women’s hats; a long gold Pin, with a head shaped like a gold padlock, decorated with a letter over blue enamel; another pin’s Head, oval, framed with diamonds, decorated with designs over enamel; and a Medallion with eight sides, framed with diamonds, with a cameo on a sky blue ground, to fasten women’s collars.
The belt Buckle shows two large medallions with eight sides, each framed with two rows of stones, decorated with cameos in the middle, and tied together by a small women’s bracelet clasp, which is also framed with two rows of stones.
The Ribbon which makes up the belt is sewn at each end to one of these medallions.
The subjects represented on all the cameos are so diversified that it is useless or even impossible to describe them. It is up to each person to choose the one which pleases him best.
These objects are drawn from the Shop of Sr. Grancher, at the Little Dunkirk, at the bottom of the Pont Neuf. It is known that a thousand plates would not suffice to show all the objects of this superb Shop.
Some time ago, a Manuscript was found in the papers of the Marquis de T…. which he had written expressly for us, and which he wanted to have passed on to us. At the top, we read, USEFUL PROJECT. The grave and imposing tone set there renders it very pleasant. Here it is.
It is in vain that our professed sages declaim at length and with bitterness against the frivolity of our customs and our fashions: it’s precisely the spirit of our inconstancy that strengthens the bounty and circulation which makes our national glory.
If opulent citizens kept the same dress, the same carriage, the same boat for twenty or thirty years, if they didn’t vary their furniture and novelties, what would become of the Artists, Merchants, Artisans, and Day-laborers who maintain their ever-renewed caprices? It’s only their flippancy which keeps these mercenaries alive, supporting the needs, paying their rents, and raising their families to strengthen the force of the State. If the rich weren’t tempted, if industry and vanity didn’t extort money from them, the poor would be overwhelmed with hunger and misery, and the Kingdom would soon be a vast desert.
These are the considerations that have occupied me for more than thirty years, and after having maturely reflected as a good patriot, I think that the healthy policy would be not to emulate those who promote the luxury of a great Nation too much. A great General, whatever ability he has, makes many men perish; a great Minister, despite his lights, can ruin the world; just so, an industrious Frivol can enrich ten thousands Workers with a single stroke of genius.
It would thus be of the greatest importance for the State to establish honors, distinctions, and flattering rewards in favor of these wise geniuses, who, through the reflected knowledge of good taste, were able to provide models of the best things of all types to the Public. Studious research on this subject could not be too strongly encouraged, and it is in order to confer a character as public as it is glorious on its authors that I dare to propose the creation of an Establishment were the sublime discoveries in Fashion could be ever consecrated with the names of those who made them.
France has always honored the establishment of the Academie Française, which illuminated the reigns of Louis XIII, Louis XIV, and Louis XV, but this Academy is only a Tribunal created to decide the sort of customs that are fashionable, the forbidding of those which are no longer, and the value of those that could be, for, assuredly, propriety in dress is, at least, as interesting as propriety in words.
The Academy of Belles-Lettres equally sets fashionable systems and annihilates old ones, but all these operations are pure speculation, and often subject to controversy: it results in little good for public affairs, while a new discovery in Fashion makes people open their purses, makes the Provinces productive, and at the end of a month makes a million livres circulate which would have otherwise been idle in the hands of its owners. A point of science doesn’t interest five hundred citizens: an agreeable fashion affects four million subjects.
The other public institutions are nearly as limited in their areas. It’s true that at the Observatory fixed points are found in discovering the immutable march of the stars, but were there two men out of five hundred who care more for what is done in the Heavens than what happens on Earth? The empire of Fashion acts powerfully on all heads: its authority passes from the palace to hovels, and the great and small are both insensibly rendered its slaves. It is thus of universal interest to establish a certain order on a matter which, in truth, never requires rigorous rules, but merits encouragement capable of nobly sustaining its course. The dart of glory is the most powerful of all vehicles.
It is in this spirit that I dare to propose the Institution of an Academie des Modes, which, in signaling our taste and increasing our coffers, will make us the model and subject of admiration of other Nations.
He then gives the plan of this novel and sublime Institution. We could report on it in following Issues, if the space to fill permits.
Mimic of Modes 
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