The History of French Glove Making
Where the rocky scrubland of limestone plateaus meets the deeply etched valleys of the Southern Mastiff Central, you’ll find the town of Roquefort, the home of the creamy blue veined cheese. The land is unfit for farming but ideal for raising sheep. No one knows exactly when this star of the French cheeses first made its debut, but its first recorded mention is in 1070, although some suggest there is evidence that it may go back even 1000 years earlier. It is certainly one of the oldest cheeses in France and its mass production led to the birth of another esteemed French industry – that of glove making.
The story by modern standards is not always a happy one. To keep the milk flowing from the ewes for this popular cheese, the lambs were slaughtered shortly after they were born. This meant their skins were too small for making anything else except for a perfect pair of gloves. As a consequence, the town of Millau, situated on the River Tarn and convenient for tanners, became the glove making centre of France.
The industry grew and grew and reached its dizzy heights in the mid-20th Century,
when the city produced nearly 5 million pairs of gloves a year and exported them all over the world. Now it is most famous for the soaring Viaduc de Millau.
Whist gloves have been worn throughout the ages, be that in the form of gauntlets for knights or ceremonial gloves for church officials, Catherine de’ Medici in the early 16th century is most certainly responsible for the rise of the glove as a feminine fashion accessory.
In 1533, when Catherine left her native Italy to marry her new husband, Henry II of France, noble women’s fashions, although expensive and luxurious, tended to be quite modest. To the horror of the new queen, it was the men who flaunted the frills, jewels and fripperies and she vowed to change that and much more besides. Catherine was extremely vain about her hands, considering them her best feature, and she found that gloves not only protected her prize possession but enhanced their beauty and gracefulness. Catherine took to wearing gloves day and night, made from the finest satins and leathers. She would bestow gloves on her favourites at court, so delicate that they could be rolled up and presented in a walnut shell polished to the highest degree. The ladies of court even took to wearing the walnut shells on chains as a status symbol.
Over the following centuries gloves became a wardrobe staple among fashionable women of all social classes all over the Western world. Lamb skin was eventually replaced by kid – the skin of milk-fed baby goats – as the dominant material for the luxury market, and materials like peccary from the wild Mexican boar, doeskin, reindeer, calf, suede, sheep chamois and even snakeskin and alligator made an appearance.
As the 1960s started to swing, gloves were slung aside and by the 1980s Millau had lost all but a few of its eminent glove makers.
Over the past few years gloves have experienced a bit of a renaissance, as a new generation recognises, values and celebrates the fine workmanship that goes into making a fine pair of leather gloves, and the fashion world is once again sitting up and listening.