The English couturier Charles Frederick Worth—preferred designer of Empress Eugénie—revolutionized the dress code of high society with one bold gesture, radical and innovative, subtle and of extreme simplicity. By placing his name, Worth, on the latest dress he was designing, it passed all at once from the status of ornament to that of a work of art. The gesture, seemingly innocent at first, turned out to be crucial, sealing the fate of fashion and becoming the founding act that still resonates today.
Having proclaimed himself an Artist with a capital A, Worth set in motion a course of action that would launch the glamorous myth of the couturier-creator, ahead of his time. It
