Bourne and Wake House to mark bicentenary of the birth of Charles Worth - the Father of Haute Couture
As proud parents, it can be tempting to imagine the potential of your children - how they could, in some small way, shape the world.
But when William and Ann welcomed their newborn son on October 13, 1825, they could never have imagined the name he would create for himself.
Growing up, rural Lincolnshire would have seemed a million miles from the swish boulevards of Paris’ most fashionable neighbourhoods.
Yet within a few decades, Charles Frederick Worth, among Bourne’s most eminent sons, would have positioned himself at the very centre of the global fashion capital.
Revolutionising the way clothes looked, were marketed and sold, laying many of the foundations of today’s industry. Beating his hosts at their own game - and in their own backyard.
Two centuries on from his birth, the name still resonates today.
If you can forgive the pun, Charles’ story is no rags to riches tale and he was born into middle class wealth.
The son of a successful solicitor, the Worth family would have been well known in the Bourne area - his father contributed a subscription to the new town hall for its upkeep.
“His mother would have been well off, so he may have grown up surrounded by well-dressed women and been influenced then,” said Adele Barker, of Bourne Arts and Community Trust (Wake House).
Charles grew up above his father’s offices in the upper floor of Wake House, a handsome Georgian building in North Street, now a hub for charities, community groups and start-ups.
He came along during a boom time for the town.
“Bourne would have been quite up and coming at the time because the town hall was built around then,” said Wake House trustee Ann Wakeford.
“The population was rising because of industry in the town.”
The second-floor bedrooms where the young Charles would almost certainly have laid his head are now used for storage and as an artist’s studio.
And what may well have been his early nursery is a comfortable consultancy room.
But the crooked staircase and wonky second-floor doorways tell their stories of times past.
“You can really feel the atmosphere of the time up in these rooms,” Ann added.
Despite being born into well-to-do surroundings, early life was not without tragedy or challenges.
Sources believe that three of Charles’ four siblings died in childhood - echoing the high infant mortality rate of the times.
And at the age of 11, Charles’ father left the family after racking up debts through bad investments and gambling.
That seismic family event sparked the end of the Worth association with Wake House as Ann left to work for her family - the Quincy’s - in Billingborough.
Charles was pulled out of Bourne Grammar School and an apprenticeship was lined up at a town printers.
“He soon made his mind up it wasn’t for him,” added Ann.
“He didn’t like getting his hands dirty on the printing ink.”
His older brother, named William after his father, had already left Lincolnshire for London and provided the solution, helping to secure the youngest Worth a position at a drapers.
So, in 1837, Charles said goodbye to his mum, boarded a stagecoach in Bourne and made the unaccompanied trip to the capital to seek his fortune. He was just 12.
Perhaps the early upheaval at home sparked a drive to succeed and to avoid at all costs his father’s fate.
“He was said to be well spoken, but quiet and reserved, yet he had an entrepreneurial spirit,” Ann added.
Armed with this spirit, Charles spent eight years in London, absorbing the bright lights and the big city, soaking up the art in the great galleries, and learning the ins and outs of the trade with two drapers.
Charles showed enough promise in the fashion world to convince the Quincy family to bankroll his wish to head to Paris - already then a renowned seat of couture.
Arriving in Paris in 1846 with a ‘modest travel bag, a Bible and five pounds’, he found work with a Versailles draper (Charles Louis Gagelin) as a sales assistant.
To a wide-eyed 21-year-old, arriving without a word of French to his vocabulary, it must have seemed a world apart from life as a solicitor’s son in Lincolnshire.
“He would have been at the heart of everything,” Ann said.
Five years into his new life, having quickly risen to the position of head sales assistant for silks and shawls, Worth married a Frenchwoman, Marie-Augustine Vernet.
Marie is now often regarded as the driver of the business, with Charles providing the creative genius and flair.
“They were a formidable team,” said Adele.
Worth’s instinct for the latest trends was described as ‘unrivalled’ and in May 1853, still only in his late twenties, he became a partner in the business.
Cultivating a profitable sideline for private orders with impressed clients ruffled a few feathers with colleagues, perhaps envious of the obvious reputation the boy from Bourne was making in their Parisian backyard.
So in July 1858, Charles uprooted and set up with a new partner, creating Worth and Bobergh, to sell silk, lace, cashmere and firs on the uber fashionable, Rue de la Plaix.
Within five years he was employing a huge workforce of almost 700, with a turnover of nearly 20 million francs.
And by 1865 he was dressing the nobility and the royalty of Russia, Austria, Italy and Spain, and wealthy American women. Even Queen Victoria is reputed to have bought one of his creations.
After Bobergh’s retirement in 1870, Maison Worth reached the peak of its powers.
At the height of his fame, he was earning £40,000 a year, accruing a personal fortune that made him one of the richest men in France.
But it was his vision and invention as much as his striking designs which still see him today labelled the Father of Haute Couture.
“Most fashion historians consider English designer Charles Frederick Worth as the originator of using models,” said Maria Costantino, a lecturer in cultural and historical studies at the London College of Fashion.
“From the mid-1860s, the house was hiring young women as what were then called ‘demoiselles de magasins’.
“He also had very important ladies and royalty who came to him - everyone got to know his name.”
Worth was the first to sign his work with a label, the forerunner of today's designer labels, and invented the bustle - the padded undergarment or wire frame used to add fullness at the back of women's dresses.
His status in France was underlined with Legion of Honour status, but did not forget his roots.
Charles Frederick maintained his links with Bourne through his friends and also visited occasionally, often staying with businessman Robert Mason Mills.
And his eye for the beautiful things in life was not lost on his two sons - Gaston and Jean Philippe.
After Charles’ death in 1895, they took the Worth brand into the perfume trade and, like their father, found international success.
As well as maintaining the family ties to fashion, Worth's two sons also kept the link to Bourne alive.
In a tidy piece of symmetry, they even visited, staying with Stephen Andrews, a solicitor who had bought Wake House.