Charles Frederick Worth is largely forgotten outside the fashion industry, but in his heyday (1860-1890s Paris), this Englishman was world-famous. Charles Dickens and Henry James wrote about him, and the exorbitant price tags on Worth’s dresses were the main plot device in a novel (La Curée) by Emile Zola.

Worth arrived in Paris in 1845, jobless, almost franc-less, and speaking barely any French. A recently qualified draper’s apprentice from Linconshire, he eventually got a job in a chic textile merchant’s shop, where he met a salesgirl, Marie Vernet. The two workmates became soulmates, and Charles began to design dresses that his fiancée wore in the shop, becoming the first ever full-time clothes model.

They married, started their own business and, thanks to Marie’s sales campaign amongst high-society ladies, founded a whole new industry: haute couture. They had the first catwalk, the first designer labels, and Worth created the template for the fashion designer as arrogant creative genius.

Stephen Clarke sets what he calls this rag-trade to riches story in its social context, with chapters about the ‘petites mains’, the poorly paid workers who made these vastly expensive dresses, and the crinoline, the bell-like dresses that created hordes of genuine fashion victims: thousands of women burned to death when they strayed too near a fireplace.

Working with some of the Worths’ descendants, Clarke tries to re-establish the reputation of the frequently forgotten Marie Worth. In the family’s huge collection of Charles’s obituaries from around the world, Marie is mentioned only for her charity work and good housekeeping, whereas without her sales techniques, the couple might have gone bankrupt in their first few months.

Charles Frederick Worth, the Englishman Who Created Parisian Haute Couture will be published on 24 April (to coincide with the exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris).