ABSTRACT
Late-nineteenth-century Paris was the setting for myriad sites of fashionable display. Along its tree-lined boulevards, stylishly dressed bourgeois citizens paraded past trendsetting courtesans during afternoon promenades. At the Palais Garnier, the capital's gilded opera house, audience members' opulent garments often enjoyed more scrutiny than did the performances on stage. Sale days at Le Bon Marché, one of the city's lavish department stores, were occasions to exhibit the latest styles on one's body while purchasing them. Even visits to view cadavers at the city morgue—a popular if morbid tourist attraction of the period—were instances where smartly dressed dandies and “well-dressed women nonchalantly trailing silk dresses” (Zola 1970: 132) 1 demonstrated their sartorial skills to crowds of onlookers drawn to a space where both corpses and clothes were on display. 2 Yet, of the many events that drew a fashion-conscious crowd to particular venues of metropolitan Paris, few could rival in spectacle and importance the horse races of Longchamp.
