This talk investigates the complex gendering of fashion and more broadly of contemporary clothing in the visual culture and social commentary of early nineteenth-century Europe. While the material and visual cultures of fashion began to be feminized in the eighteenth century, a development that gained ascendency in the late nineteenth century, through much of the early nineteenth century masculinity played a leading role in visual and textual representations of fashionability and clothing conventions. There was a flourishing of a female fashion culture that operated largely in the sphere of consumer spectacle and display but reflection on collective developments in dress were more concerned with public images of masculinity. The talk will explore the apparent paradox of this gendering through examination of the visual and literary culture of fashion in the early nineteenth century.
Susan L. Siegfried is Denise Riley Collegiate Professor of the History of Art and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. Author of Ingres: Painting Reimagined (2009) and Staging Empire: Napoleon, Ingres, and David (with T. Porterfield, 2006), she is completing a study of visual representations of fashion and costume in nineteenth-century Europe.