A magazine and the temperature of an age.

Paris is fashion, which is the common recognition of the world today. In the early 17th century, before Europeans knew what style was, the luxury industry in Paris went hand in hand with urban planning, and beautiful cities complemented beautiful goods. By the end of the 17th century, France had succeeded in "Frenchifying" all of Europe, making Paris the "capital of fashion."

Never in history has a modern city been so thoroughly identified as the center of the luxury industry as Paris. The renovation and beautification of cities, the popularity of fashionable tourism, the ever-upgrading shopping experience and marketing techniques...

Paris offered the world a whole new set of modes of consumption and entertainment. Craftsmen, merchants, artists, Kings... All classes are participating in this shopping revolution, leaving only imitation elsewhere, and only Parisian style will remain......

City of fashion

Before the 1670s, the concept of international fashion did not exist. For the most part, women in European countries tend to respect their national dress. Fashion changes slowly, and luxury clothing is more about wealth and power than style and fashion.

As Paris became the fashion capital of Europe, fashion trends began to cross borders. Fashion began to be exported, and new styles spread rapidly from one country to another. Since then, fashion has gradually become an international industry.

Fashion spread in one direction at first. As the women interviewed in The Merry Messenger predicted, and as Louis XIV wanted, people across Europe began to copy the new styles from France. But how this phenomenon happens is not a simple process, and it is not something that Germans will happen after seeing someone else's dress in Strasbourg. Dono Devis is well aware that for fashion to prevail in Europe, advertising is essential.

The Merry Messenger spared no effort to promote fashion. In the issue in which women appeared to explain the workings of fashion, one mentioned the stockings she had just seen (" the most attractive object in the world ") in Jean Pedrijon, the most famous fashion dealer of the time.

An expert in fine silk weaving and fashion accessories, Pedrijon is considered by many to be the most discerning man in Paris. Many consumers believed that his store was unique and flocked to his square store near the Palace Department store, just as people today visit concept stores or exclusive boutiques.

Although other merchants also sold stockings, Pedrijon's goods often became fashionable during the season. There is a scene in Moliere's comedy in which one character sees another with a ribbon he bought from Pedrijon's shop and immediately exclaims, "That's typical Pedrijon!" By covering the store, Dono Devis is not only teaching his readers what to wear, but also how to find the hottest items at the moment. The answer is always the same: Paris.

By 1678, The Merry Messenger was so popular that it was published every month. That year, for the first time, the journal began to publish images of current fashion trends.

The images describe the new styles in such detail that even outside Paris, the reader can understand how to put together the clothes. Figure 1 shows the latest fashion for men in the winter of 1678. The text reminds the reader of its important elements, such as the fact that the most fashionable cape of the time was a black pattern on a red background.

Figure 1: This print is a detailed illustration of the dress guide for fashionable men in the winter of 1678, and this image became the starting point for the illustrated fashion publication

This illustration from the January 1678 edition of The Merry Messenger also marks the first time that images of fashionable clothing were used to promote fashionable clothing that was now available in the market.

Such images soon ceased to be rare; they became known as "fashionable". This issue of The Merry Messenger also makes clear the relationship between this illustration and trendy marketing. Also from this issue, the map was the first to indicate where to buy fashionable clothing. This kind of venue, the haute couture store, is the key to making Paris a fashion capital.

Picture 2: This painting was created by Jean Bellan in 1678. The haute couture shop in the picture is also the earliest picture of modern fashion marketing. The array of products on the walls and counters far exceeded that of any merchant's home

Donno Devis has gone to great lengths to promote this new Parisian shopping model. This painting (Picture 2) was created by Jean Berain, the royal designer of Louis XIV,

And chief decorator of the Paris Opera Ballet. His work depicts a fashion-obsessed couple; The couple styled themselves exactly according to the popular guide in that year's "The Merry Messenger" photo. Here, the decor of the couple's venue is as fashion-forward as their clothes. The space, owned by a haute couture merchant, is stocked with a collection of trendy clothes similar to those in Pedrijon's store. On the shelves, clothes are carefully arranged with accessories. Luxurious fabrics are placed on display tables, showcasing their colors and textures, allowing customers to imagine how they would look in fashion.

The store in this image is the prototype of a Parisian department store, which Bellan used to attract periodical readers, and it is an early example of mobilizing customer sentiment. As defined in the January 1678 issue, the new store allowed customers to find a wide range of desirable items in an elegant, sophisticated setting. As one 18th-century German woman put it, the abundance of this product deliberately made the customer "greedy," where there was everything that money could buy, and addicted the customer to the environment created by the retail store.

Galeries Lafayette in Paris

Bellan wasn't just advertising a store, he was selling what he thought was the perfect store, the quintessential Parisian boutique.

Over the next decade, many printers and painters followed Bellan's example, creating a series of images of the perfect shop, some of which had not previously appeared in Paris or elsewhere, including Claude Simple, Alexandre Leroux, Nicolas de la Maison, and Forve Le Camus. Under their brush, the shop itself became an art form, and shopping in it became a modern means of acquiring luxury goods.

Before Louis XIV came to power, merchants usually took samples directly to the homes of wealthy customers for them to choose from, so shopping in physical stores was rare. In fact, a store is often the place where a business's goods are stored. The Windows in the street were protected by the product of the shutters, with only the bottom part open, so that passers-by could choose the goods; Therefore, in the past, the space for displaying objects was simple and small.

In the modern store, merchants for the first time really aroused the desire of consumers to leave their homes and go to the store. This approach is all the more important because of the efforts of Bellan and other artists. In all the images of high-end consumption, we see merchants displaying goods carefully enough to capture the attention of customers and manage to get them to stay in the store for an extra moment and pay for their purchases. Here, artists are well trained in the way merchants and customers spend their money in stores.