The Boot and Shoe Trades in London and Paris in the Long Eighteenth Century

According to Jean Morin, women's strong shoes, for instance, had to be similar
to men's shoes, but also to be representative of their users:
leur routurne et toutes les apparences a 1 'extérieur doivent encore le plus souvent
établir la dWérence qui servirait a caractêriser et afaire savoir a quel genre de
femmes us pourraient être destinés.89
The French Revolution partially changed social attitudes in footwear. The lack
of leather (used for military boots) affected the supply of leather shoes. Sabots
became the sign not of the old regime social differences among the population,
but the sign of patriotic values. 90 La femme du Sans-culotte is represented in
revolutionary prints wearing clogs with the republican coccarde.91
3.3.4 Social differentiation
We have to be careful in creating a dichotomy between British shoes and
French clogs suggesting a classic image of eighteenth-century French economic
stagnation and British consumer revolution. In this view, proposed by E.P.
Thompson and Harold Perkins in the 1960s, Britain produced goods for larger
parts of society, while France continued a quality-based production for the upper
and middle class. 92 This vision has been partially revised by the idea of
'popoluxe goods' in eighteenth-century Paris and by the recent research on the
French consumer revolution during the period 1725 to 1775. Research on
marchand-merciers and other French urban trades has discovered a colourful
world of object, as well as a dynamic economy for eighteenth-century France.94
89 J. Morin, Manuel du bottier et du cordonnier (Paris, 1831), p. 139.
9°L.-S. Mercier, New Picture of Paris (London, 1800), vol. i, p. 181.
91 A. Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution (New York, 1988), p. 87.
E.P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (London, 1963); H. Perkin, The
origins of modern English society (London, 1969).
C. Fairchild, 'The production and marketing of populuxe goods in eighteenth century Paris',
in J. Brewer and R. Porter, ed., Consumption and the world of goods, cit., pp. 228-48. See also C.
Jones and R. Spang, 'Sans-culottes, sans café, sans tabac: shifting realms of necessity and
luxury in eighteenth-century France', in M. Berg and H. Clifford, ed., Consumers and luxury,
cit., pp. 37-72.
See for instance P.A. Parmal, 'Fashion and the growing importance of the marchande de
modes in mid-eighteenth-century France', Costume, XXXI (1991), pp. 68-77; A. Pardaithé-
Gakabrun, The birth of intimacy: private and domestic lfe in early modern Paris (London,
1991); M. Sonenscher, 'L'impero del gusto: mestiere e commerci nella Parigi del XVIII secolo',
Quaderni Stonci, XXIX - 3 (1994), pp. 655-68; J. Coffin, The politics of women's work: the
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