Charles Frederick Worth The Englishman who Invented Parisian Haute Couture: … with the invaluable help of his French wife Marie and the Empress Eugénie

by Stephen Clarke

277 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2025

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Alex Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not super interested in this, but joined my partner visiting the Worth exhibition in the Petit Palais in summer 2025 and read more than half of this on the train to Paris. It is extremely readable and made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions. It gave me a good grounding in what to expect of the exhibition and I definitely wanted to finish it later on. In addition to life of Worth, on the way the book has fascinating chapters on key moments of the history of Paris and the lives of the women who made the fashion industry tick. Definitely putting other books by the same author on the list.