The Idea of Fashion

This work proposes to write the history of fashion from an unusual angle, without focusing on its creators or their pieces, but by analyzing the discourses which, in various forms, allowed fashion to constitute itself as a separate discipline. whole. In this way, The Idea of Fashion subverts the expectations commonly attached to publications on the subject and combines analysis of texts, history, and visual studies with the aim of integrating this discipline into the broader field of design. Émilie Hammen thus places fashion in a history of ideas which has its source in the post-revolutionary period in France, ending with the age of the avant-gardes at the beginning of the 20th century. Throughout this long 19th century, a historiography emerges which focuses above all on identifying certain enunciators – those who speak and thus successively define fashion during this period. By studying these actors as well as the interplay of their appearances and disappearances, the author rethinks the turning points and ruptures traditionally recognized by the changes in silhouettes which often accompany changes in political regimes. For the modification of the shape of a sleeve or the length of a skirt, this study proposes to substitute the passage from the writer to the tailor, that from the engineer to the designer. It is thus less a question of considering fashion as a material or visual manifestation, than as a set of discourses produced and supported by different socio-professional groups. Without renouncing the historiographical sources which composed the heyday of costume histories, this work instead sets out to shed new light on them.