A History of French Marketing with Draeger Frères

Post contributed by Brandee Newkirk, Processing Intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

During my time as an intern for the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library, I had the opportunity to process the Draeger Frères printing collection. While at first glance this collection seemed distant from my dissertation research that focuses on diet and fitness culture among Black women between the 1920s and the 2000s, I was pleasantly surprised by the collection’s breadth and depth. The collection includes hundreds of items that reflect an almost century-long span of French’s marketing history, and it touches upon so many research interests that even some of its items contributed to my own research.

Draeger Frères was one of the leading, high-end publishing companies in France for close to 100 years. Founded in 1866 by Charles Draeger as Draeger & Lesieur, the company began expanding its clientele through participation in the 1889 International Exposition, which featured several of its specialty self-promotional color catalogs.[1] After the death of Charles Draeger in 1899, Draeger’s wife, Amélie Bagdassard Draeger, took over the company with their sons Georges, Maurice, and Robert, keeping Draeger Frères a family business.[2] By the interwar era, Draeger Frères had reached its peak and was known as one of the pioneers of marketing and advertising in France. This success led many companies to work with Draeger Frères; among them are Coty, Hermès, Renault, Printemps, and Ford.[3] This success also drew many artists to begin their careers with Draeger Frères, including René Vincent, Charles Martin, Man Ray, and R. Ernst, among countless others.[4]

Draeger Frères achieved success through its innovative color printing techniques, established by Charles Draeger’s early work. The printing company became known for its half-color and two-color printing processes and, by the 1930s, invented Procédé 301 (Process 301), which combined methods of three-shot color photography, color correction, and photogravure printing to create bright, colorful photographs and illustrations in its printed catalogs.[5] This patented technique quickly propelled the printing company, as many companies desired brochures and catalogs that best captured their products. Printing for the Draeger Frères company ended in the 1970s, as large-scale print advertising began to dwindle, yet the Draeger brand remains active in France today.[6]

The collection of industries, companies, artists, and governments, including the Vichy regime, featured in Draeger Frères’ printed brochures, catalogs, and art books displays the topical reach of advertising and marketing. For my own research, which focuses on diet and weight culture among Black women in the early 20th century, Draeger Frères’ extensive work producing catalogs for many fashion stores and clothing companies in France gave me deeper insights into French beauty and clothing trends. Many elite Black figures began to travel to France in the 1920s due to the country’s more accommodating attitudes toward Black Americans, including artists such as Laura Wheeler Waring and W.E.B. Du Bois, and French beauty ideals regarding a woman’s figure began influencing Black culture. Draeger Frères’s collection of catalogs for the High Life Tailor company, a large-scale French clothing store, became a primary resource for my research.

The Draeger Frères printing collection at the Hartman Center demonstrates the vast intellectual range found in advertising and marketing materials. From fascist regimes to 20th-century automobile marketing, researchers can use this collection and pull at the historical threads that linger within the oeuvre of Draeger Frères’ printed works, which present a distinctive narrative to French and even global consumer histories. This collection is already available to researchers at the Rubenstein Library.

Footnotes:

[1] Kim Timby, “Draeger Frères: Tradition and Innovation in the Printing of Art and Advertising,” in Factory Photobooks. The Self-Representation of the Factory in Photographic Publications, ed. Bart Sorgedrager (nai010, 2023), https://hal.science/hal-04308687. Background information on Draeger Frères can also be found on their company website: https://fr.checkout.draegerparis.com/pages/notre-histoire.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Draeger Frѐres printing collection, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

[4] Ibid.

[5] See Box 14, Item # 4, For a more detailed description and finding aid see: https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/draegerfreres

[6] See boxes 7,8,9, and 12, Item #s 170-213