Charvet Place Vendôme (), commonly known as Charvet, is a French luxury high-end shirt maker and tailor located at 28 Place Vendôme in Paris, France. The company designs, produces and sells bespoke and ready-to-wear shirts, neckties, blouses, pyjamas and suits in its Parisian store, as well as internationally through luxury retailers.
Charvet was founded in 1838. Since the 19th century, it has supplied bespoke shirts and haberdashery to kings, princes, and heads of state. It has acquired an international reputation for the high quality of its products, the level of its service and the wide range of its designs and colors. Thanks to the renown of its ties, charvet has become a generic name for a certain type of silk fabric used for ties.
History
Foundation
The store was founded in 1838 (or possibly 1836) by Joseph-Christophe Charvet, known as Christofle Charvet (1809–1870).
His father Jean-Pierre, a native of Strasbourg, had been "curator of the wardrobe" for Napoleon Bonaparte, a position created at the beginning of the Empire. The curator assisted the chamberlain or "master of the wardrobe", who supervised all aspects of the emperor's wardrobe – updating the inventories, placing orders, paying bills, and establishing regulations. This position was initially held, between 1804 and 1811 by count Augustin de Rémusat. When it appeared in 1811 Rémusat was mismanaging the wardrobe, an inventory was requested to Jean-Pierre Charvet, and Rémusat was replaced by count Henri de Turenne d'Aynac. Christofle's uncle, Étienne Charvet, was the steward of the château de Malmaison and later of the château de Saint Cloud. Étienne Charvet's daughter Louise Caroline Catherine (1791–1861), Christofle's first cousin, married at the age of 14 Constant, Napoleon's head valet. The marriage was arranged by Napoleon himself, who signed the marriage contract. She became in 1813 a linen keeper at the château de Saint Cloud, therefore responsible for making the imperial shirts. Her portrait (Figure, right) was bequested to the Malmaison museum in 1929 by Édouard Charvet. Constant and his wife Louise did not follow Napoleon in his exile to Elba, an "enormous mistake" according to Christofle's father. Instead, they moved to Elbeuf and invested in a weaving factory, created by Louise's brother Jean-Pierre and specialized in novelty fabrics for trousers and lady coats.
Christofle Charvet created the first shirtmaker store in Paris, for which the new term chemisier (shirtmaker) was coined. Previously, shirts were generally made by linen keepers with fabric provided by the customer, but in this store of a new kind, clients were measured, fabric selected and shirts made on site. The development of this specialty trade was favored by a change in men's fashion, with more importance given to the waistcoat and the shirt collar, which called for more propositions for the shirt front and a technical change. Previously, shirts were cut by linen keepers entirely of rectangles and squares. There were no shaping seams and no need for shirt patterns. The new interest for a closer fitting shirt led to curving the armhole and neckline or adding a shoulder yoke, by application to the shirt of tailoring techniques. The new kind of shirt was called chemise à pièce (yoked shirt). Alan Flusser credits Christofle Charvet with the original design of a collar that could be turned down or folded, much in the manner of contemporary collars, and the concept of the detachable collar.
In 1839, Charvet already had some imitators, but still the "best supply". The same year, Charvet held the title of official shirtmaker to the Jockey Club, a very exclusive Parisian circle, then headed by Prince Napoléon Joseph Ney and inspired by Count Alfred d'Orsay, a famous French dandy. It had about 250 members, mostly aristocrats, who, despite the name of their club, were more interested in elegance than horses. Being a member was a necessary step in order to become a lion, the term used then for a dandy. In an advertisement of March 1839, Charvet, presenting himself as the Club's shirtmaker, claimed to offer "elegance, perfection, moderate prices". Soon after, the claim to moderate prices was dropped (see images, right).
Joseph-Édouard Charvet, known as Édouard Charvet, (1842–1928) succeeded his father Christofle in 1868. He in turn was joined in the early 20th century by his three sons, Étienne, Raymond and Paul.
Location
The store was initially located on the rue de Richelieu, at n° 103 and later at n° 93.
It moved to n° 25, place Vendôme in 1877. This move reflected a shift in the center of the Parisian high society and the growing importance for fashion of both rue de la Paix, where the house of Worth had opened in 1858, and the palais Garnier against the Théâtre Italien, closer to Charvet's original location. Though Charvet began to offer women's blouses and men's suits in its new store, men's shirts remained the house's specialty. An American journalist, visiting the store in 1909, reported "there were shirts of every variety and almost every color [,] artistic enough to make one long for them all, and each and every one most beautifully made." The store was noted for its displays, compared in 1906 to Loie Fuller performances, and Charvet paid an "immense salary" to the window decorator, who displayed "each day a new series", producing "veritable works of art in his harmonious combinations of scarves and handkerchiefs and hosiery".
In 1921, the store moved to n° 8, place Vendôme.
In 1982, it moved to its current location, at n° 28.
Charvet remains the oldest shop on place Vendôme, which explains both the inclusion of the location into the firm's name, and the use as a logo of the sun device, designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart to ornate the handrails of the balconies of the Place, which was built in honor of Louis XIV, the Sun King.
International recognition
In 1855 Charvet exhibited shirts and drawers at the Paris World's fair. The jury noted that Parisian shirt makers had an "unquestionable supremacy". Again, at the next Paris World's fair, Charvet exhibited shirts, drawers, vests and handkerchieves and the Jury noted luxury shirts were a Parisian "monopoly". When the king-to-be Edward VII visited the fair, he ordered Parisian shirts, as many other foreign visitors did, and remained a loyal customer of Charvet, "honoring him during forty years with a special kindness" (See List of Charvet customers). Charvet created for the prince of Wales a certain style of shirt collar, the stand-up turn-down collar, also referred to as the H.R.H. collar, which became very popular at the end of the 19th century (Figure, right).
In 1863, Charvet was considered the first producer of fine shirts in Paris, claiming superiority "for taste and for elegance" on cuffs, bib and fit. Charvet's store was a "very important" destination for English visitors in Paris. In the following years, Charvet developed its specialization in royal trousseaux. In 1878, he won a silver medal at the World Fair and a gold medal at the 1889 Paris World's fair, for which the Eiffel tower was built. When it won the latter, the jury noted: "Fine shirts remain the property and glory of Paris. To be convinced of it, it is sufficient to give a look to the displays of the companies specialized in royal haberdashery". Other royal patrons confirmed this princely speciality of Charvet, such as Alfonso XII of Spain (1878), Antoine, duke of Montpensier (1879), Philippe, comte de Paris (1893), and sultan Abdul Hamid II (See List of Charvet customers).
The clientele of Charvet also included artists such as Charles Baudelaire, who gave a metaphysical dimension to dandyism, George Sand, whose lover Alfred de Musset never succeeded to become a member of the Jockey Club, Édouard Manet, nicknamed the "dandy of painting" or Jacques Offenbach, composer of La Vie Parisienne. In 1893, when he tried to enter the , Verlaine had himself photographed wearing a "very beautiful Charvet scarf" (Figure, left). Allegedly, a gift of 100,000 francs to "the greatest poet of our time, Verlaine", was the stake of a bet between Edmond de Polignac and Robert de Montesquiou. Having lost the bet, Montesquiou "naturally kept the 100,000 francs but gave Verlaine a very beautiful scarf". Upon hearing the story, Polignac cut all relations with Montesquiou. Nevertheless, some other writers consider this story as a legend circulated by Montesquiou himself, as no document establishes the existence of this bet and Montesquiou was almost the only one in the elegant and cultured world to care for Verlaine.
In 1894, an administrative report praised Charvet for constantly seeking high-novelty and setting the trend for other Parisian shirtmakers, having irreproachable manufacturing standards, and successfully enticing French factories to produce the raw materials traditionally supplied by England.
After his 1897 portrait by Giovanni Boldini, Montesquiou's dandyism became famous and made him a frequent subject of caricatures. In 1903, a French satirical magazine illustrated by a caricature from Sem to which Marcel Proust alluded in a letter to Montesquiou, had Montesquiou saying: "Nobody in the world ever saw such things! Pinks, blues, lilacs, in silk, and in cobweb! Charvet is the greatest artist in the Creation." In a letter to Montesquiou, alludes to the caricature by Sem of Montesquiou examining products at Charvet (Figure, right).
In 1905, Charvet, then also established in London, at 45 New Bond Street, and "rumored" to be contemplating an establishment in New York, was considered the "foremost haberdashery of Paris and London". Its customers included not only royalty, such as Alfonso XIII of Spain (warrant granted in 1913); Edward VIII, duke of Windsor; the French president Paul Deschanel, noted for his elegant Charvet cravats; but also members of the high society gravitating around dandies such as Robert de Montesquiou and Evander Berry Wall, or artists as Jean Cocteau, who called Charvet "magic" and wrote that it is "where the rainbow finds ideas", and his friend Sergei Diaghilev. According to Proust, whose shirts, ties and waistcoats were from Charvet, maybe by imitation of Montesquiou, the latter was "the sign of a certain world, of a certain elegance". Proust also spent long moments at Charvet in search of a perfect tone for his cravats, such as a "creamy pink". His tank tops (marcel in French) also came from Charvet. In his Remembrance of Things Past (1919), Marcel, the narrator, waiting for the appointed hour of his lunch engagement at Swann's house, whiles away his time "tightening from time to time the knot of [his] magnificent Charvet tie". In 1908, Charvet won a Grand Prix at the London Exhibition.