There is no question that Creoles have played, and continue to play, an important part in the history of Louisiana, and in building our region’s overall identity. What is less certain is exactly what “Creole” means. Who are Creole people? Where did they come from? Who counts as Creole?
The answers to these questions are complicated. The term transcends the more rigid boundaries of race that we are accustomed to assigning in the United States and has changed over time. In its earliest usage in colonial Louisiana, Creole—créole in French or criollo in Spanish—referred to any person born in the Americas of European or African ancestry. Over time, that geographic marker came to describe a varied group including white people, enslaved and free Black people, and people of mixed European, African, and Indigenous heritage. What began as a marker related to the geography of a person’s birth became a cultural one, as residents of colonial Louisiana crafted a new and unique identity for themselves out of the many influences that came together here. Like their food and music, Creoles’ historical fashions show the multifaceted roots of their cultural identity.
Making the Old World New
Portrait of Clara de la Motte, 1789–1799, by José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza (HNOC, 1981.213)
Portraits by José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza provide some of the earliest examples of Creole fashion in Louisiana. His paintings, which feature prominent new Orleanians of the 18th and early 19th centuries, show the influence of French fashion on wealthy New Orleans Creoles. The bouffant hairstyle above was popular among the upper classes, and, like the gold earrings, speaks to the wearer’s wealth and status. The many layers of clothing, which fit the weather of western Europe better than that of the Gulf of Mexico, are evidence that practicality was not a priority for elite women. Brocades, hoopskirts, panniers, stiffened and boned bodices, and heavy embroidery were the order of the day.
Free West Indian Creoles in Elegant Dress, ca. 1780, by Agostino Brunias (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.29)
Some early Creole fashions seemed better suited for American climates. Here we can see lightweight white muslin dresses that are still elegant, but are better suited to the tropical environment. Such dress styles, while eventually adopted by white Creole women, were pioneered by free Creole women of color. These fashions eventually crossed the Atlantic to France, where women imitating them were said to be dressing “in the Creole style.”
Marie Antoinette in a Muslin Dress, 1783, by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (Public Domain)
Marie Antoinette was painted wearing a similar gown in 1783. Some were scandalized that the queen would wear a “chemise gown” that resembled women’s undergarments, but the style proved lasting. Through the 1820s, flowy white muslin fabrics dominated fashion trends throughout Europe. Many fans have admired the beautiful styles of a Jane Austen or Bridgerton heroine, most with no idea they were witnessing the lasting influence of 18th-century free Creole women of color on fashion.
African Influences
Portrait of an unidentified Black woman, 1892–1902, by Howard Weeden (HNOC, 1984.2.1)
One of the most recognizable items of 18th and 19th century Creole fashion is the tignon. These headdresses, usually associated with Creole women of color, are evidence of Louisiana’s fraught racial history.
Tignons were common among free and enslaved women in colonial Louisiana and the Caribbean. The tradition has roots in West African cultures and, for enslaved women in particular, had a practical purpose: to protect hair, preserve hairstyles, and keep clean while doing dirty work. But wearers made these headscarves beautiful, too, using bright colors and patterns and tying the wraps in intricate ways.
The Spanish governor of Louisiana issued a law in 1786 that required all women of African descent to cover their hair in public. Intended to regulate Black women and reinforce the racial hierarchy, these tignon laws had the opposite effect: Creole women of color used their elaborately tied headwraps to accentuate their status and beauty, highlighting their hair rather than hiding it. Many used the finest silk fabrics and adorned their tignons with jewels and feathers. Eventually, white women in Louisiana and even France began to appropriate such headwear.
The sitter’s blousy white top, likely part of her chemise undergarment, is very reminiscent of the white muslin “chemise” dresses worn by free Creole women of color in the 18th and early 19th centuries. (Creole in a red headdress, 1829–1849, by Jacque Guillaume Lucien Amans. HNOC, acquisition made possible by the Diana Helis Henry Art Fund of the Helis Foundation in memory of Charles A. Snyder, 2010.0306)
Resisting Americanization
While the colonial Louisiana Creoles modified European, African, and Caribbean clothing traditions to fit their New World society, 19th-century Creoles had different concerns. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Creoles faced a new threat: Americanization. To differentiate themselves from their new Anglo-American neighbors, Creoles recemented their ties to Europe through trade, travel, art, and fashion. English philosopher Harriet Martineau described the “mutual jealousy” between the two groups in the 1830s: “The Americans ridicule the toilet practices of the French ladies; their liberal use of rouge and pearl powder.” Anglo-Americans may have mocked fashionable Creoles, but for the women themselves, French-influenced style was an important way to maintain their identity.
The French influence is evident in this 1832 portrait by Jean-Joseph Vaudechamp. The subject’s elaborate hairstyle, called coiffeur à la giraffe, was meant to imitate the horns of the giraffe. The ’do gained popularity in 1826, when the governor of Sudan gave a giraffe named Zarafa to the French king. Seeing Zarafa on display in Paris, people went mad about anything relating to this exotic creature—including commemorative hairstyles.
(Woman with Fur Boa by Jean Joseph Vaudechamp, 1832. HNOC, 1981.233)
American by Design
The demand for French fashions in New Orleans was so strong that European craftspeople established their own stores in the city. Olympe Boisse came to New Orleans from France in the 1840s and took over a successful millinery business on Chartres Street in 1853. She soon expanded the business to include ballgowns, shawls, fans, and other fashionable accessories of all sorts for the ladies of New Orleans. She took frequent trips back to France to ensure that she was always importing the latest fashions, allowing her Creole clientele to keep up with their continental cousins, and giving Boisse, in the words of the New Orleans Business Directory, “the most brilliant and fashionable store in the city.”
Satin fan by Olympe Boisse (retailer), 1883–1884. (HNOC, L. Kemper and Leila Moore Williams Founders Collection, 1966.13)
Madame Boisse brought more than just the latest fashions from France. Like Charles Worth, the Parisian dress designer who is widely accepted today as the first true fashion designer and the father of haute couture, Boisse dictated to her clientele what they should wear, instead of the other way around. She also followed Worth’s example by adding labels into her dresses. She and Worth were among the first designers to do so, making the designer label of one’s dress even more important than its material or design in showing the status of the wearer. One could argue that this French-born immigrant who catered to wealthy Creoles was one of the first true American fashion designers, with a blending of cultures and influences reminiscent of Creole identity itself.
Billhead for Olympe and Co., 1857–1882. (HNOC, MSS 405.404)
About the Historic New Orleans Collection
Founded in 1966, the Historic New Orleans Collection is a museum, research center, and publisher dedicated to the stewardship of the history and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South. Follow HNOC on Facebook and Instagram.
