Dressing Up
The Women Who Influenced French Fashion
$68.54
- Hardcover
280 pages
- Release Date
2 November 2021
Summary
French fashion of the late nineteenth century is known for its allure, its ineffable chic—think of John Singer Sargent’s Madame X and her scandalously slipping strap. For Parisian couturiers and their American customers, it was also serious business. In Dressing Up, Elizabeth Block examines the couturiers’ influential clientele—wealthy American women who bolstered the French fashion industry with a steady stream of orders from the United States. Countering the usual narrativ…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262045841 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0262045842 |
| Author: | Elizabeth L. Block |
| Publisher: | MIT Press Ltd |
| Imprint: | MIT Press |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 280 |
| Release Date: | 2 November 2021 |
| Weight: | 567g |
| Dimensions: | 178mm x 229mm |
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Critics Review
“This handsomely illustrated, anecdotal volume illuminates the symbiotic relationship between late-19th-century Parisian fashion houses and their well-to-do American clients. Block, a senior editor for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s publication department, writes winningly.”
—the Washington Post
Winner of the Victorian Society in America Book Award, 2022
“Like The Gilded Age, Elizabeth L. Block’s Dressing Up puts the women of the era—and their dresses—at the center of its narrative. Block’s new book frames the wealthy elites who shaped the Gilded Age economy, culture, and politics as consumers, and focuses on the wives and daughters of elite businessmen and financiers. Such an emphasis allows Block not only to insert women and women’s agency more meaningfully into Gilded Age history, but also to explore the economic consequences of the fashion trade. In Block’s narrative, elite women were more than a passive manifestation of Thorstein Veblen’s ‘conspicuous consumption.’ They were active players in a transatlantic network of commerce, power, and privilege that allowed them a position of influence within U.S. society by turning fashion and the dresses they wore into cultural capital.”
– Library Journal
Elizabeth L. Block
Elizabeth L. Block is an art historian and Senior Editor in the Publications and Editorial Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has contributed to publications including American Art and West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture.
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