The used-clothing trade did not have an honorable reputation. In 1614, for example, an anonymous tailor charged in Discours de deux marchands fripiers et de deux maitres tailleurs (Discourses of Two Fripperers and Two Master-Tailors):

All the clothing you have comes from hanged persons,
From those who have on the wheel been broken,
From noble felons decapitated
For using their swords in duels outlawed
From syphilitics who induced such a sweat
That they gave up the ghost while the barber bled them.

The fripperers' reputation had not changed much by 1782, when Frenchman Sebastien Mercier observed in Tableau de Paris:

In the Place du Louvre—one sees old clothes, a hideous display that hangs on strings and turns in the wind. This. frippery seems both dirty and indecent. There, shop clerks, masons, and porters scavenge for obviously worn-breeches. New ones are contraband. Of...