Full Description
Eighteenth-century fashion was cosmopolitan and varied. Whilst the wildly extravagant and colorful elite fashions parodied in contemporary satire had significant influence on wider dress habits, more austere garments produced in darker fabrics also reflected the ascendancy of a puritan middle class as well as a more practical approach to dress. With the rise of print culture and reading publics, fashions were more quickly disseminated and debated than ever, and the appetite for fashion periodicals went hand in hand with a preoccupation with the emerging concept of taste.
Richly illustrated with 100 images and drawing on pictorial, textual and object sources, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations to illustrate the diversity and cultural significance of dress and fashion in the period.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Peter McNeil
Chapter 1 - Textiles
Tove Engelhardt Mathiassen
Chapter 2 - Production and Distribution
Beverly Lemire
Chapter 3 - The Body
Isabelle Paresys
Chapter 4 - Belief
Dagmar Freist
Chapter 5 - Gender and Sexuality
Dominic Janes
Chapter 6 - Status
Mikkel Venborg Pedersen
Chapter 7 - Ethnicity
Barbara Lasic
Chapter 8 - Visual Representations
Christian Huck
Chapter 9 - Literary Representations
Alicia Kerfoot
Notes
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
