Behind the seams: women, fashion, and work in 19th-century France

Abstract

"In this highly original book, Susan 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 centry 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."-- Supplied by publisher.

Contents

Veiling women's work -- Fashion's fingers: immodest Modistes -- Fasion's voices: "Modistes des Lettres" -- Fashion's eyes: painting in the mirror -- Epilogue: Midinettes in motion.