Social Distinction and the Birth of the Department Store

Just as people today move to big cities for work, in the nineteenth century many headed to Paris to find jobs - and there were plenty. The Industrial Revolution had begun in Paris too, and as technology advanced the city enjoyed an unprecedented material prosperity. Around 1.4 million workers staffed mechanized factories, and about 50,000 women worked in garment-making alone. Commerce also benefited from new technology, and a growing group of people earned a decent income in trade: the "middle class," the people most like us today.

What would you do first if you suddenly had money? If you dream of a luxury bag, it's not simply because it's better than a cheap one. Owning what celebrities and the wealthy carry gives you a sense of belonging - "I'm in the same league as them" - and sets you apart from those who don't have it. This habit of looking up to the class above while distinguishing yourself from the class below, in a class system nobody talks about, is what sociologists call "distinction."

Parisians two centuries ago did the same. The newly prosperous middle class wanted a culture different from that of workers and ordinary people, and they pursued it by imitating the aristocracy. The trouble was that aristocratic luxuries were far too expensive. Luckily, advances in technology produced cheaper "semi-luxury" goods, and imported products poured in, so the middle class could create a culture and fashions of its own. In this wave of new trends, shops selling "what's newly fashionable," known as magasins de nouveautés, began to appear.

Thanks to the transformation of Paris, these shops left the arcades behind and set up all over the newly tidy city, growing as they went. If a department store is a place that sells a hundred kinds of goods, then these fashion shops became department stores by steadily widening their range. Bon Marché started out as one of them, and as it diversified its products and expanded, it grew into the first department store.

But why, having flocked to the arcades for their street-level shops, did Parisians turn back to fashion shops on the street? What set these new shops apart from the old ones? Was it simply that the roads had become cleaner? We'll answer that in the next chapter.