The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Régime (Past and Present Publications) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Jean Birrell (Translator) "Whilst the last decades of the twentieth century have seen the appearance of museums of fashion, a phenomenon by definition short-lived, historians have yet to..." (more)
Key Phrases: consommation vestimentaire, mistress dressmakers, clothing economy, Peuple de Paris, Les Contemporaines, Eighteenth Century Europe (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"At the outset Daniel Roche makes it known that he seeks to retrieve the history of clothes from the highly specialist world of folk museums and historians of costume. This stimulating work is the proof of his success." Times Literary Supplement

"...the book demonstrates brilliantly how to write social and cultural history." Choice

Product Description

This book is a study of dress in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In it Roche discusses general approaches to the history of dress, locates the subject within current French historiography and uses a large sample of inventories to explore the differences between the various social classes in the amount they spent on clothes and the kind of clothes they wore.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 564 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521574544
• ISBN-13: 978-0521574549
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #275,181 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A comprehensive look at clothing, May 8, 2000

By	Emily (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews

Roche's book offers a very complete view of clothing, dress, and fashion (the three are not the same for him) during the early modern period in France. Ranging from notarial inventories to linen theft, his empirical evidence support his main thesis that rapid changes in society ultimately culminated in a clothing revolution of sorts in the latter half of the eighteenth century. His in-depth analysis of even the most esoteric aspects of clothing and dress in the Ancien Regime prove just how diffuse the effects of those items were on all aspects of society. His arguments regarding the development of a sexual dimorphism as a result of changes in and perceptions of fashion presents a particularly interesting viewpoint on how clothes came to "make the man" or women, as the case may be in that argument. Equally interesting are his discussions on linen and cleanliness and the inventories of clothing taken upon a persons death. Importantly, Roche's analysis travels far beyond just a cursory look at the nobility and courtly attire into the world of the bourgeois class and especially on the lower working classes of France at the time. Where other authors fall far short of offering a complete view of attitudes toward fashing, dress, and clothing in the early modern period, Roche ably fills in the gaps and never shies away from an exhaustive look at the many aspects of clothing in the Ancien Regime.