Fashion in European Art

Justine De Young is Assistant Professor of the History of Art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. Her research focuses on nineteenth and twentieth-century art and literature, visual and material culture, modernism and fashion. She has written widely on art and fashion, notably for the 2012-3 exhibition, 'Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity'.

Fashion reveals not only who we are, but whom we aspire to be. From 1775 to 1925, artists in Europe were especially attuned to the gaps between appearance and reality, participating in and often critiquing the making of the self and the image. Reading their portrayals of modern life with an eye to fashion and dress reveals a world of complex calculations and subtle signals.Fashion in European Art explores the significance of historical dress over this period of upheaval, as well as the lived experience of dress and its representation. Drawing on visual sources that extend from paintings and photographs to fashion plates, caricatures and advertisements, the expert contributors consider how artists and their sitters engaged with the fashion and culture of their times. They explore the politics of dress, its inspirations and the reactions it provoked, as well as the many meanings of fashion in European art, revealing its importance in understanding modernity itself.

AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsIntroduction: Addressing Fashion in Art by Justine De Young1. From the Studio to the Street: Modelling Neoclassical Dress in Art and Life by Amelia Rauser2. Parures, Pashminas, and Portraiture, or, How Joséphine Bonaparte Fashioned the Napoleonic Empire by Heather Belnap Jensen3. Temporalities of Costume and Fashion in Art of the Romantic Period by Susan L. Siegfried4. Desire and Dress: Rossetti's Erotics of the Unclassifiable and Working-Class Models by Julie Codell5. Mourning for Paris: The Art and Politics of Dress after 'l'année terrible' (1870-71) by Justine De Young6. Mannequin and Monkey in Seurat's Grande Jatte (1884) by Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen7. 'But the coat is the picture': Issues of Masculine Fashioning, Politics and Sexual Identity in Portraiture in England c. 1890-1900 by Andrew Stephenson8. Silencing Fashion in Early Twentieth-Century Feminism: The Sartorial Story of Suffrage by Kimberly Wahl9. Puppets, Patterns, and 'Proper Gentlemen': Men's Fashion in Anton Räderscheidt's New-Objectivity Paintings by Änne SöllNotes on the ContributorsSelected Bibliography