Abstract
The study deals with the analysis of Charles Baudelaire's aesthetic theory and some practices of the founder of haute couture Frederick Worth. While both artists have their place in the history of fashion and art - Baudelaire as the one who integrated the phenomenon of fashion into aesthetic thinking, Worth as the man who recontextualized clothing creation from craft towards art - their belonging is often affected by their mere temporal and local affiliation to the Paris of the Second
Empire. In contrast, we attempt to present an essential connection between the two phenomena.
Our interpretation demonstrates how Worth's seemingly disparate practices (which might appear to be merely marketing or psychological) find a unifying basis in Baudelairean aesthetics (formulated especially in the seminal essay Le Peintre de la vie moderne) and, conversely, how some of the questions raised by many of Baudelaire's theoretical formulations arrive at a certain answer in
Worth's rather merely intuitive practice. This crossing of theory and practice is manifested in the simultaneous crossing of fashion and art, giving rise to their essentially modern form.