The ambiguous representation of female milliners was not confined to the popular press but also reflected in fine art. Here Édouard Manet has placed a modiste within an intimate environment—as revealed by her casual dress and bared shoulder—that could be read in a number of ways. One explanation is that the woman may be the proprietor of a hat shop that also functions as an establishment for clandestine prostitution, making her a madam as well as a modiste. Another is that this woman has turned her living establishment into a millinery shop, which would account for her casual state of partial undress. 

The photographer Eugène Atget included this image of the home of "Madame C" in his album documenting the Parisian millinery trade. Though Madam C is otherwise unidentified and her shop does not appear in commercial directories of the time, this photograph confirms that her home was used for millinery activities. The comingling of public shop with private living quarters was common and not necessarily a sign of prostitution. Instructive texts were published in order to give women the skills they needed to manufacture or trim hats at home.

The popular press as well as writers published stories that criticized female shoppers for succumbing to the allure of department-store merchandizing, spending money their families could ill afford to waste. These women were depicted as frivolous and impulsive, who suffered from “uncontrollable desires” stoked by the alluring display techniques and the many goods available. Then as now, consumer culture was propelled by changing fashions, and the modern woman’s ongoing quest for the latest style was also lampooned in the press. Women who purchased extravagant hats, for example, were confronted with demeaning representations in word and image, such as this satirical print, which depicts women sporting hats with such outrageous trimmings as a burning candle, a bird perch, and an entire pot of flowers.

The vastly expanding fashion press actively constructed a counter narrative to the often critical view of fashion in the popular culture. Flooding the market with weekly publications that were sometimes distributed internationally, these journals provided women with insights into the latest trends regarding the shapes, colors, and trimmings for their hats. In these journals, shopping was the activity of the modern woman who selected items to express her independence, individual agency, and style. The female consumer was thus dually presented as a flighty spendthrift and as a woman artfully crafting her self-image.

This pastel presents a backstage scene, truncated to highlight a singer’s concentration before she steps on stage. Crowded next to her is a hovering man wearing a top hat. This style was originally worn by men of all social classes but by the 1870s was typically worn only by those of the middle and upper classes. The hat marks him as an affluent operagoer, like Degas himself, who was allowed access to the wings and rehearsal rooms to interact with the female performers. Such a highly charged situation would have been understood by viewers to be laced with titillation. The man’s hat therefore symbolizes not only his wealth but also his masculine privilege.

Degas created this study using an innovative technique that he created by thinning oil paint with turpentine to a consistency that allowed him to “draw” with it. The subject is possibly the artist’s younger brother, Achille. The treatment of the bowler hat, or chapeau melon in French, suggests Degas’s interest in men’s hat styles as well as women’s. The dark shading and bright highlights surrounding the hat reveal the artist’s study of the form and volume of the bowler. A reworked area alongside the back brim shows the artist’s preoccupation in capturing just the correct angle of the hat. Bowlers were generally a much more functional style compared to a top hat. The style was widely adopted by the lower and middle classes. However, elite men would wear the style for informal occasions, and it had bohemian connotations as well. Degas himself wore the bowler increasingly in his later years.

Flowers were a staple motif for women’s fashion in the 19th century. Their popularity both reflected and emphasized a longstanding idealized notion of femininity linking women to the natural world. The production of artificial flowers from silk, cotton, velvet, and even paper was a large industry in Paris. By the 20th century, an estimated 28,000 artificial flower makers were working in the city.

The Parisian hat industry supported a massive international trade in exotic feathers, particularly those from France’s African colonies. Exotic feathers were expensive and provided further embellishment to luxury hats. Impervious to the weather, natural feathers also made practical decorations. Plumage from domestic French birds, including seagulls and owls, were also used to decorate hats, as were preserved whole birds and parts. But by the last decade of the 19th century, conservationists were raising the alarm about the unbridled hunting of exotic birds, many species of which were becoming endangered. Ostrich plumes, which had been fashionable throughout the century, became even more popular as a result. Such plumes posed no issue with conservationists, because of the establishment of African ostrich farms and the fact that the large feathers could be safely removed from the bird without causing injury.

This hat has a full African starling perched above its brim. The plumage industry was responsible for the death of hundreds of millions of birds. It has been said that in just one year, 1911, 300 million birds were killed for the trade. These enormous numbers led to significant conservation efforts and the foundation of societies for the preservation of birds, including the Audubon Society in America and the English Society for the Protection of Birds. Much of the conservationists’ criticism was directed at French milliners. Laws were passed in the United Sates that banned the importation of exotic feathers, and the vogue for this extravagant hat plumage essentially came to an end by 1914, the start of World War I, when more streamlined styles came into fashion.