The connection between fashion, femininity, frivolity and
Frenchness has become a cliche. 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.
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