This book is not just a history of 'haut couture', but a penetrating social history of French life and art. It takes a literary approach to the subject, with chapters on Baudelaire's dandy, on the role of fashion in the novels of Balzac and Proust; and the relationship between fashion illustration and avant-garde painting. It looks at fashion today, concentrating particularly on the question of whether women designers create styles that are more liberating for their female customers than those produced by their male counterparts and includes portraits of the lives of ten milliners and seamstresses that provides an insight into 19th-century working conditions. Readership: people interested in fashion: social historians; historians of France.
- ISBN10 1635570891
- ISBN13 9781635570892
- Publish Date 19 September 2017 (first published 24 March 1988)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 8 April 2021
- Imprint Bloomsbury USA
- Edition 3rd ed.
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 344
- Language English