Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.51 (820 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1859738354 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-07-12 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"Fun, interesting and different in a good way" according to S. Black. Quickly I will just say this book was great. I enjoyed the entirely different perspective on the French History it covered. It held my interest and was definitely worth my while in reading it!
As someone with a deep personal interest in 'La Mode', I was enormously pleased to be assigned the task of reviewing Jennifer M. 'The recent release of Sofia Coppola's 'Marie Antoinette', with its lavish and detailed depiction of eighteenth-century court dress, suggests an enduring interest in the topic of fashion. Jones's book on fashion, gender and shopping under the Old Regime, especially since it is well-written and engaging.'Christine Adams, H-France Review
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. The connection between fashion, femininity, frivolity and Frenchness has become a cliché. 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 f
Jennifer M. Jones is Graduate Director of Women's Studies and Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University