Description
Book SynopsisIn this highly original book, Susan E. Hiner looks behind fashion's seams and focuses on the women fashion producers both working- and middle-class who were key to shaping the French fashion economy.
Behind the Seams thus opens up the fields of both fashion and French cultural studies and explores new ways of understanding the 19th century by demonstrating that these women's complex and contradictory roles as producers of luxury items left them exploited by an oppressive fashion system even as they served as influencers within it.In 19th-century France, fashion was a powerful and lucrative network that depended on women's expert manipulation of its raw materials. The delicate finger work of seamstresses and modistes yielded frothy dresses and ethereal hats; the subtle, persuasive rhetoric of written chronicles resulted in savvy, targeted marketing campaigns of goods and lifestyles; and the stylized visual splendour of the detailed drawing, engraving, and painting of fashion pl
Trade ReviewThis outstanding study, rich in newly discovered archival materials, illuminates the pathways to professionalization forged by skilled women hatmakers, journalists, and illustrators… Brilliant analyses by Hiner, one of today’s leading fashion scholars, make this beautifully illustrated book a must-read. * Heidi Brevik-Zender, University of California, Riverside, USA *
Hiner’s beautifully illustrated book takes us behind the shop windows and into the workshops, salons and studios of the women who made Paris fashion famous in the nineteenth century ... A must read for everyone interested in the hidden histories of fashion. * Alison Matthews David, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada *
An original and significant contribution to our understanding of women's lives in 19th-century France. * Valerie Steele, Museum at FIT, USA *
This beautifully illustrated volume explores the hidden work of women who produced or promoted female fashion in nineteenth-century France. With astute readings of text and image Hiner uncovers, in fascinating detail, a different reality beneath the frothy glamour of silk and lace. * Anne Green, King’s College London, UK *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Prologue: Behind the Seams 1. Veiling Women’s Work 2. Fashion’s Fingers: Immodest
Modistes 3. Fashion’s Voices:
Modistes des Lettres 4. Fashion’s Eyes: Painting in the Mirror Epilogue:
Midinettes in Motion Bibliography Index
