ABSTRACT
This essay explores how settings of the Paris fashion industry both inspired Broadway glamour and offered a mirror for American national and cultural identity, in three 20th-century Broadway musicals: Victor Herbert and Henry Blossom’s operetta Mlle Modiste (1905), Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach’s musical comedy Roberta (1933) and Richard Rodgers and Samuel Taylor’s musical play No Strings (1962). These musicals use images of Parisian couture to examine questions of gender and sexuality as well as contradictory ideas about democracy and aristocracy; pragmatism and aesthetic style; Puritanism and sensual expression; and ‘American’ and ‘European’ worldviews. Set in a Rue de la Paix millinery shop, Mlle. Modiste defines Parisian sophistication as a luxurious accessory to the more essential asset of American democracy, epitomised by the shop-girl heroine of the title. Unfolding in the boulevard dress shop of a courtesan-turned-couturier, Roberta models sophistication via a more fluid concept of American gender roles as a virile college fullback transforms into a chic ‘dressmaker’. Centred in Paris’ modelling industry and spanning locations on the French Riviera, No Strings aligns ideals of sophistication with not only the city’s sartorial elegance but, as contrasted with American bigotry, with Paris’s history of expatriate freedom for African Americans.
