The Secret Language of Fans: Romantic Myth or Baroque Reality?

Throughout Baroque and Rococo Europe, the hand-held fan was far more than a cooling device. It was the sceptre of sovereignty for aristocratic women, a fashionably folded emblem of refinement and rank. Introduced to French court life by Catherine de Medici in the 16th century, the fan became “an indispensable fashion accessory for aristocratic ladies.”¹

Quick answer: No. The famous “secret language of fans” is a myth. It was invented in the 1850s by Parisian fan maker Jules Duvelleroy as an advertising gimmick, not a real code used by Baroque or Victorian aristocrats. Below is the real history, and how the myth caught on anyway.

Section Index:

• Practical and Social Purposes of the Fan
• Flirting with Fans: Rumor or Reality?
• The Fan’s Afterlife: Legend and Legacy
• Frequently Asked Questions

Monarchs protected the trade: Louis XIV banned Italian imports in favor of homegrown lace and mother-of-pearl wonders,² while in England Huguenot refugees around 1685 established a booming London fan industry.³ By the late 1700s the finest fans were jeweled works of art: engraved tortoiseshell and ivory, silk leaves painted with mythic scenes or vogue subjects (the eruption of Vesuvius, say, or French emigres in Koblenz)⁴ and for a lady to own dozens of fans was a symbol of status in the highest courts. Queen Elizabeth I famously owned “dozens of these fans” herself.⁵

In portraiture of the era, a fan appears again and again: the Swiss National Museum notes that hand-held fans feature in “countless portraits of high-born women, where they functioned as female status symbols, feminine ‘sceptres of sovereignty.'”⁶ The accompanying image, Vittorio Amedeo Grassi’s Portrait of a Lady with a Fan (c.1775-95), shows a fashionable Italian noblewoman gazing coyly, fan in hand: an aristocrat armed with style and mystery.

Practical and Social Purposes of the Fan

Even as the fashion flourished, fans served practical and social purposes. In stuffy ballrooms they cooled bearers and masked tired eyes. The Swiss National Museum emphasizes that high society treated fans as more than tools for hot air: ladies even learned to hold fans with propriety, and a mid-18th-century etiquette manual listed six “genteel” fan positions.⁷

Masters of seduction knew that a well-timed flutter, a slow sweep, or the mere flash of painted iris could frame a woman’s expression. Joseph Addison quipped in The Spectator (1711) that “Women are armed with Fans as Men are with Swords”⁸, a sly remark suggesting that in elegant salons the fan could be as effective a weapon of attraction as the rapier was in war.

As museum scholarship explains, this may have been satirical, yet it hit close to the truth: a fluttering fan is an instrument of coquetry. A dropped fan might discreetly attract a suitor’s gaze, and concealing a half-smile or blemish behind lace granted a lady narrative control.⁹ Legend says Empress Elisabeth of Austria even used a fan to hide her face and evade photographers in the 1860s.

Flirting with Fans: Rumor or Reality?

For centuries, romantics have told stories of secret messages passed between dancers by fan. The lore goes that in hushed ballrooms a bejeweled fan conveyed a rich vocabulary: a lady hiding her left cheek meant “I love you,” a slow flutter declared “I am married,” waving in the left hand signaled “We are being watched.” These anecdotes are ingrained in popular imagination, repeated in novels and party games.

Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and its 2004 film adaptation A Good Woman revolve around just such a code. Even 21st-century fiction references the idea: Hugo Lunny’s historical novel Untenable: Our Fragile Preservation (set in late-18th-century Austria) treats the fan as an emblem of delicate communication, underlining how enduring the motif is.

But historians and museum experts have largely debunked the fan-language as a charming 19th-century fabrication. A definitive reckoning comes in Murielle Schlup’s scholarly survey: she explains that the “fan language” popularized in the 18th century is actually legend. The first written source for any supposedly secret codes is a mid-19th-century leaflet from Parisian fan-maker Duvelleroy (founded 1827).¹⁰

Jules Duvelleroy, motivated by the Victorian craze for symbolic codes (as with flowers or handkerchiefs), printed pamphlets claiming that certain gestures had fixed meanings; essentially an advertising gimmick to sell fans.¹¹ Historians note that Duvelleroy’s “language” was cleverly sold across high society, even printed in English and distributed with fans as a flirtatious instructional manual.¹² In reality, there is no reliable evidence that any coherent fan-sign system was widely taught or used among 17th- or 18th-century aristocracy. As Schlup dryly observes, the very notion is “a contradiction in terms.” A “secret” language that was supposedly common knowledge.¹³

The myth’s persistence may owe more to marketing than medieval intrigue. Auction houses and costume historians note that Duvelleroy’s 1850s leaflets are the roots of the canon of signals.¹⁴ Even Sotheby’s concedes that the “secret language of fans” proved to be more a marketing tool than anything else.¹⁵ The Fashion History Museum bluntly calls any alleged code “a complete fashion myth.”¹⁶

There were scattered precedents and flirtatious gadgets, though. Around 1797-98, novelty “conversation” fans were actually sold in London that used fan movements to spell out letters or words.¹⁷ One (advertised in The Observer) let a lady broadcast a letter of the alphabet by waving in coded positions; another, sold as The Ladies Telegraph, had numbered fan panels to point at for spelling sentences.¹⁸ A real 1798 fan of this type survives, now a Christie’s lot: it bore twenty-six movable flaps labeled A-Z.¹⁹ But these were parlour gadgets, not hidden signals passed under the nose of a chaperone. As Regency history researchers note, any such transmission would defeat the purpose of secrecy since half the ballroom would guess it.²⁰

What was real in the 17th and 18th centuries was simply the fan’s function as a refined prop of etiquette and allure. Gentlemen learned that one should wait until a lady had fanned herself before approaching; ladies were instructed in elegant fan carriage as part of finishing school. Italian ladies sometimes moved the open fan lightly under the chin or across the face to demur politely, gestures not standardized, but naturally readable in context. Unlike a military code, they were not universal or printed in a booklet; they were subtle extensions of natural flirtation.

The Fan’s Afterlife: Legend and Legacy

Despite its shaky historicity, the fan’s fabled language has endured in lore and art. Tour guides in Seville still extol the abanico “secret signals,” and coffee-table histories show idyllic images of lovers decoding fluttering menus of courtship. A 2018 Vogue article on a San Francisco exhibition claimed that “as early as the 18th century there was a discussion of these fan languages,”²¹ even crediting a mysterious 18th-century Spaniard named “Fenella” for conceiving a code. In truth, museum curators admit Fenella’s directions are essentially the same as those circulated in Victorian fan manuals.

Many modern websites confidently list dozens of gestures, but these simply recycle the 19th-century catalog: carrying a fan in the left hand means “come and talk to me,” drawing it across the cheek means “I love you,” and so on.²² These lists are enchanting, but they are at best period role-play and at worst a marketer’s fantasy.

Still, the myth has color and momentum. During the Victorian fan revival sparked by Duvelleroy, academies allegedly taught fan language as a genteel flirtation art. It is easy to see why the notion caught on: a language of discreet gestures fit perfectly into the era’s love of codes (the language of flowers, secret cipher rings, and so on). Oscar Wilde capitalized on it; so did Georges Bizet’s Carmen, where a fan and other trinkets carry loaded meanings; and film and television continue to show characters fluttering fans to signal passion or pique. Much like the hidden practices behind medieval currency fraud we’ve covered before.

In pop culture today, the fan still flutters with mystique. An exhibition of 18th-century fans at the de Young Museum in 2018 revived interest in these stories.²³ Dance forms like flamenco in Spain keep fans alive as expressive tools, even if they carry no hidden dictionary. And for the ever-inspired, there are novels like Lunny’s Untenable or cozy mysteries that assume fans could convey secrets, perpetuating the folklore. Even Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld in the 1980s embraced the fan – partly as showmanship, partly to discreetly fend off bad breath.

Scholars today agree: the genuine story is more subtle. A lady might let the gentle rhythm of her fan express her ease or anxiety, and a gentleman might respond to any “flirt” accordingly. But the intricate catalogue of coquettish gestures as written in fan-language books only arrived after the period in question – a charming catalogue devised long after Marie Antoinette left the court. Grand ladies of the 1600s and 1700s held fans at their discretion, not by a universal codebook.

Today we look back and smile at the idea that a fan was a silent telegraph. The truth is that fans were indeed carriers of messages but the messages were ones of fashion, class, and flirtation that any sharp observer could read without a key. They were the unspoken gestures of a society defined by nuance. If nothing else, the very persistence of the fan’s legend reminds us how thirsty we are for symbols: we imbue even a lady’s cooling device with romance.

If you enjoyed this kind of richly researched historical detail, you’ll find it woven through Untenable: Our Fragile Preservation, our original screenplay book set in late 18th century Austria. Browse all original screenplay books →

Frequently Asked Questions

Was the secret language of fans real?

No. Historians and museum curators treat it as a 19th century marketing myth rather than an authentic aristocratic code. There is no reliable evidence that a coherent fan signal system was taught or used among 17th or 18th century nobility.

Who invented the language of fans?

The earliest written source for a “fan language” is a mid-19th century pamphlet from Parisian fan maker Jules Duvelleroy, founded in 1827. It was distributed alongside fans as a promotional, flirtation themed instruction sheet, not a record of an existing tradition.

What did Victorian fan gestures supposedly mean?

Popular lists claim that carrying a fan in the left hand meant “come and talk to me,” drawing it across the cheek meant “I love you,” and a slow flutter signaled marital status. These lists trace back to 19th century marketing material, not documented historical practice.

Did fans have any real social function in the 17th and 18th centuries?

Yes. Fans functioned as status symbols and tools of refined etiquette. Owning many fine fans signaled rank, and women were trained in elegant fan carriage as part of court manners. Fans also served practical roles, cooling their owners and letting a lady subtly mask her expression.

Were there any real coded fans?

Novelty “conversation” or “alphabet” fans were sold in London around 1797 to 1798, using numbered or lettered panels to spell out messages. These were parlour novelties rather than discreet secret signals, since using them required visible reference to a printed key.

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