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Sexing la mode gender, fashion and commercial culture in old regime France
Author
Title
Sexing la mode [electronic resource] : gender, fashion and commercial culture in old regime France / Jennifer M. Jones.
ISBN
9781847888860 (ebook)
Published
Oxford : Berg, 2004.
Physical Description
1 online resource (xviii, 244 p.) : ill.
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
Compliant with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Content is displayed as HTML full text which can easily be resized or read with assistive technology, with mark-up that allows screen readers and keyboard-only users to navigate easily.
Description based on print version record.
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
The connection between fashion, femininity, frivolity and Frenchness has become a clich . Yet, relegating fashion to the realm of frivolity and femininity is a distinctly modern belief that developed along with the urban culture of the Enlightenment. In eighteenth-century France, a commercial culture filled with shop girls, fashion magazines and window displays began to supplant a court-based fashion culture based on rank and distinction, stimulating debates over the proper relationship between women and commercial culture, public and private spheres, and morality and taste. Mary Wollstonecraft was one of those particularly critical of this 'vulgar' obsession with 'tawdry finery', declaring it to be 'merely the external mark of a depravity shared with slaves'. The story of how la mode was 'sexed' as feminine offers a compelling insight into the political, economic and cultural tensions that marked the birth of modern commercial culture. Jones examines men's and women's relation to fashion at this time, looking at both consumption and production to argue how clothing was becoming increasingly conceptualized as feminine/effeminate. A concise history of French fashion culture suitable for anyone interested in eighteenth-century culture, women and gender studies or fashion history.
Variant and related titles
Berg fashion library.
Other formats
Print version :
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
November 04, 2021
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Audience
Specialized.
Contents
Prologue: The Morning Toilette Introduction Part I La Cour: Absolutism and Appearance in the Court of Louis XIV Chapter 1 Courting La Mode and Costuming the French Chapter 2 Fashion Culture in Print Chapter 3 Objects of Desire, Subjects of the King Part II La Ville: Clothing and Consumption in an Enlightened Society of Taste Chapter 4 A Natural Right to Dress Women Chapter 5 The Agreeable Art of Clothing Chapter 6 Coquettes and Grisettes Chapter 7 Selling La Mode Conclusion Epilogue: From the Absolutist Gaze to the Republican Look
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