The Culture of Clothing
The Culture of Clothing
£49.00
GBPNewly avilable in paperback, this major contribution to cultural history is a study of dress in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Daniel Roche discusses general approaches to the history of dress, locates the subject within current French historiography and uses a large sample of inventories to explore the differences between the various social classes in the amount they spent and the kind of clothes they wore. His essential argument is that there was a 'vestimentary revolution' in the later eighteenth century as all sections of the population became caught up in the world of fashion and fast-moving consumption.
- Easily the most thorough and comprehensive history of dress and its social meaning written to date
- The author is one of the most distinguished of the new generation of French historians
- Available now in paperback; English translation from the original French
Reviews & endorsements
'At the outset Daniel Roche makes it known that he seeks to retrieve the history of clothes from the highly specialist world of folk museums and historians of costume. This stimulating work is the proof of his success.' Alan Forrest, The Times Literary Supplement
Product details
October 1996Paperback
9780521574549
564 pages
216 × 140 × 32 mm
0.71kg
10 b/w illus. 42 tables
Available
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Table of Contents
- List of plates
- List of tables
- Part I. History of Clothing:
- 1. Clothing or costume? 2. The Quicherat effect and after
- 3. History, fashion and clothing systems from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
- Part II. The Economy of Wardrobes:
- 4. Towards an understanding of the Parisian clothing system
- 5. The hierarchy of appearances in Paris from Louis XIV to Louis XVI
- 6. The contents of wardrobes from the classical age to the Revolution
- 7. The invention of linen
- 8. The triumph of appearances: nobilities and clothes
- 9. The discipline of appearances: the prestige of uniform
- Part III. Producing, Selling and Stealing: the Distribution of Appearances:
- 10. From crafts to customers: the Parisian clothing economy
- 11. From crafts to customers: tailors, dressmakers, linen-drapers and fashion merchants
- 12. From theft to resale: another aspect of the clothes trade
- 13. Caring for clothes: from propriety to cleanliness
- Part IV. Truth and the Mask:
- 14. Clothes in the novel
- 15. Rational and healthy clothes
- 16. Fashions in reason and reasons for fashion: the birth of the fashion press in France
- Conclusion: The culture of appearances: consumption and morality
- Index.
