Mercier also mentions, in his Tableau de Paris, la poupée de la rue Saint-Honoré: "C'est de Paris que les profondes inventions en modes donnent des loix à l'univers. La fameuse poupée, le mannequin precieux, affublé des modes les plus nouvelles ... passe de Paris à Londres tous les mois, et va de là répandre ses graces dans toute l'Europe. Il va au Nord et du Midi, il pénètre à Constantinople et à Petersbourg, et le pli qu'a donné une main françoise se répète chez toute les nations, humbles observatrices du goût de la rue Saint-Honoré."
The practice was much more ancient. M. Ladomie asserts that in the Royal expenses for 1391, figure so many livres for a doll sent to the Queen of England; in 1496 another, sent to the Queen of Spain; and in 1571 a third, to the Duchess of Bavaria.
Henry IV. writes in 1600, before his marriage to Marie de Médicis: "Frontenac tells me that you desire patterns of our fashion in dress. I send you, therefore, some model dolls."—Miss Freer's Henry IV.
It was also the custom of Venice, at the annual fair held in the Piazza of St. Mark, on the day of the Ascension (a fair which dates from 1180), to expose in the most conspicuous place of the fair a rag doll, which served as a model for the fashions for the year.—Michiel, Origine delle Feste Veneziani.
Tableau de Paris. 1782.
"The French nation are eminent for making a fine outside, when perhaps they want necessaries, and indeed a gay shop and a mean stock is like the Frenchman with his laced ruffles without a shirt."—The Complete English Tradesman. Dan. Defoe. Lond., 1726. Foote, in his Prologue to the Trip to Paris, says, "They sold me some ruffles, and I found the shirts."