17th century women

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Engendering the Guilds:
Seamstresses, Tailors, and the Clash of Corporate Identities in Old Regime France *
Clare Crowston

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Louis XIV established the Parisian seamstresses’ guild in March 1675, provoking a groan of protest from the city’s tailors, the women’s closest trade rivals. Inspired by fiscal, economic, and social considerations, the royal government had created an independent and exclusively female guild for the first time in over two hundred years. The trade rights granted the female artisans consisted of the capacity to make and sell women’s and children’s clothing, a prerogative they held in common with the tailors’ guild. Their statutes forbade them, however, from producing men’s clothing. The royal government explicitly reserved this sphere for the tailors, along with the right to make dresses worn ...