“M. Felix has completed a remarkable piece of work…. M. Felix has brought to life fashions of generation after generation. He has given a complete history of costumes worn by women of many centuries….. The visitor sees a series of tableaux; he passes from one epoch to another. The figures which wear the beautiful gowns are gracious, living! Each one has been sculptured in the ateliers of ‘Le Palais Du Costume,’ and after living models. Moreover, each has been placed in its proper setting, with rigorous attention to the authenticity of every detail.” —“The First Month in Paris,” The Plain Dealer, May 20, 1900
“The figures are life-size and most carefully modeled, and, so far as realism has been carried, that where the stuffs for the costumes were not to be found ready to hand, they have been, regardless of cost, woven for the purpose after the best specimens preserved in the museums.”—“Walks through the Paris Exhibition, 1900,” Western Daily Press, April 25, 1900
“No such waxworks ever before were seen. The art of the modeler, the scene painter, the stage manager, the historian, the archaeologist, the collector, the historical romancer and the portrait panter are employed together not only to illustrate the history of costume, but to bring back the daily life of bygone centuries.” —“ ‘The Street of Algiers’ ”—The Midway of the Paris Exposition,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 8, 1900
“Foremost among the great fashion kings of today stands Felix, the master sartorial artist of Paris,” enthused The Macon Telegraph, which published a letter from the couturier, quoted from below.
“…this year has not created a style truly new and original. Several dressmakers have endeavored to restore to favor the crinoline of olden time, but the good taste of women have shipwrecked these attempts. How much more suggestive in effect are the present styles which, while veiling the charms of women, permit one to guess audaciously what one does not see. . . . To speak truly, and that is always my principle, La Mode is a meaningless word. Every elegant woman should have a style for herself, and should not severely follow that of the moment, and that is what I wished to show by my Palais du Costume which was the great success of the exposition.” —“Vive La Mode! Felix, Its King, Tells the Ladies Something of Art in the Twentieth Century,” The Macon Telegraph, October 28, 1900
1901
Maison Félix closes its doors, prompting reminisces.
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