Full Description
This dynamic exploration of two key modes of visual culture - fashion and photography - in 19th-century Istanbul contributes to an expanding body of research on fashion and the dressed body outside the Euro-American context. Based on meticulous analysis of visual, written and material objects, it focuses on women's lived experience during a time of dramatic change in the Ottoman Empire.
Over the 19th century, the women of Istanbul gradually transformed their appearance, adopting European dress and new modes of self-fashioning, including photographs. The book reconstructs a complex fashion history, and the dramatic changes that took place in women's lives in this period, and given the diverse population of Istanbul in terms of ethnicity, class, race and religion, attends to the differing clothing habits of the women of the city. The book focuses particularly on elite women as fashion tastemakers and on the dress of enslaved and working women.
Appealing to scholars across a range of fields, including fashion history, Ottoman studies, women's and gender history, visual culture and photography history, Fashion in Late Ottoman Istanbul provides a fascinating insight into women's histories, writing and dress practices in a rapidly changing Istanbul.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
1. Setting the Stage
Decentering Fashion History
Fashion
Photography
Who lived in Ottoman Istanbul
Istanbul as a global city
Enslavement and the harem
What's in, what's not
The book's structure
2. Picturing Fashion and Understanding Dress: The Sources
Visual Sources: Painting and book illustration
Visual Sources: Photography
Written Sources
The Garments: Museum Collections of Ottoman women's dress
3. The Garments: Tailoring, Construction and Transformation
Elite women's dress in 18th century Istanbul: Tailoring and construction
Elite women's dress in 18th century Istanbul: the textiles and the garments
Dress in the first decades of the 19th century
Transformations
4. Acceleration of Change: The dress, the photograph and Ottoman weddings
Working with historic photographs: the bindalli example
The Bindalli dress and changes over time Bindalli embroidery
The white wedding dress
Wedding photography
Ottoman weddings: Who wore what
5. The Fashion Economy in Istanbul
Hanimefendi: the Ottoman consumer
Interaction with European women
Ottoman women among themselves
Fashion Media
New clothes and shopping
6. The Tastemakers
Who's who: Understanding the cast of characters
Fehime Sultan
The Occasions
Palace Wardrobes
7. The Elusive Fashion Stories of Enslaved Women and Domestic Servants
Enslaved women and their clothing
The Visual Evidence
The texts
The Garments
8. Dressing for Work
Education and Work for Women in late Ottoman Istanbul
Looking for the dress of Ottoman women at work
Ottoman working women
Dressing for the street
Afterword: The Afterlife of Ottoman Dress
Dress in the first decade of the Turkish Republic
The bindalli dress as folk costume and later
Fashion tastemakers, the 21st century version
The Magnificent Century and 21st century wedding dresses
Bibliography
Index
