Paris Fashion: A Cultural History - Hardcover

Steele, Valerie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195044657 ISBN 13: 9780195044652

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1988

Synopsis

Paris has been the international capital of style for over three hundred years. In this provocative and richly illustrated volume, Valerie Steele--author of the highly acclaimed Fashion and Eroticism--offers a penetrating social and cultural analysis of fashion in Paris. More than just a history of famous designers and changing styles, the book is about fashion as a cultural ideal and a social phenomenon. Steele explains why Paris was the center of fashion for so long, providing brilliant insight into the concept of "style" and the significance of fashion in modern society.
Just as Fashion and Eroticism radically revised the stereotype of "prudish" Victorian dress, so also does Paris Fashion debunk many long-standing myths about the fashion industry. Steele shows that the "great names" of fashion, from Worth to Dior, were not so much "dictators" or radical innovators as they were astute barometers of fashion trends, and that, contrary to popular belief, Coco Chanel was not the first great woman designer, but rather one of a very long line of women who influenced the world of fashion. Both the French belief in the innate national "genius" of their couturiers and the equally popular idea that American women finally smashed the "dictatorship" of Parisian men are shown to be incorrect.
While focusing primarily on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Steele also traces the early history of fashion, from the cities of Renaissance Italy to the courts of Burgundy and Versailles, and the streets of Revolutionary Paris. She explores the "geography of fashion" in Second Empire Paris, showing how the new boulevards, cafés, and theaters vastly expanded the stage for the public display of fashion. Steele excels at revealing how fashion has been portrayed in the work of great French writers and artists, with fascinating chapters on the role of fashion in Balzac's novels--Balzac himself was usually horribly dressed--and how Proust dwelled on the "mute language of clothes." "The Black Prince of Elegance," Steele's analysis of dandyism in the life and work of Baudelaire, illuminates the changing meaning of men's dark apparel in the era of high capitalism, while her study of fashion and art provides a new way of looking at Impressionism and modernism as an artistic vision.
By focusing on a "case study" of Paris, Steele shows how the clothing we wear today continues to express the way we see the world and ourselves.

About this title

About the Author:

About the Author:
Valerie Steele received her Ph.D. in History from Yale University, and teaches in the division of graduate studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY).

Review:

"This is an original, gracefully written study of Paris fashion, one that manages to say as much about national character, in a sense, as it does about the rise and fall of hemlines . . . I would not only recommend it to anyone interested in the psychology of clothes, but to anyone planning a sejour in France - as much required reading, say, as the Green Guides of Michelin." - Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Steele has achieved some heroic feats of compression, though without clogging her narrative . . . at every stage the argument is buttressed with case histories and anecdotes. The 80 or so illustrations make an important contribution, too . . . not only well chosen but well integrated into the text, and the art of portraying fashion is itself discussed in illuminating detail . . . [Steele's] book offers many insights and pleasures, including some excellent quotations." - The New York Times

"An impressive compendium of information." - The New York Times Book Review

"A mine of novel information and fascinating illustrations, Valerie Steele's book is good to look at and good to read." - Eugen Weber, Historian

"An innovative renewal of a subject all too often explored ploddingly. Ms. Steele enhances brilliantly the eternal appeal of French couture." - Palmer White, author of ELSA SCHIAPARELLI: EMPRESS OF PARIS FASHION

"Once I started reading, I could not stop! Valerie Steele's book is wonderfully witty, pleasurable to read and so well documented. It is one of the best complete studies on Paris fashion that I have ever come across." - Jean-Michel Tuchscherer, Former Curator, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"Steele's book is a richly textured analysis of sources - artistic, economic, literary, social, and it is a perfect book to recommend to students and many others beside." - Costume

"Valerie Steele’s Paris Fashion is the one-stop scholarly guide to French fashion. Beautifully written and deeply researched, it brings together a cast of characters, a set of policies, and an ethos about fashion that the whole world hopes to understand. The book is widely considered the leading work in English on the subject. Based mainly on primary sources, it demonstrates a feeling for French culture that is palpable on every page." - Peter McNeil, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

"In this new edition of her seminal book, Valerie Steele brilliantly builds on her exploration of Parisian spaces, places and characters, real and imagined, at the heart of the cultural construction of Paris fashion. With a wealth of new illustrations, as ravishing as they are informative, and with new insights into Paris fashion, this book is more than ever indispensable to anyone interested in understanding the making of a fashion city." - Agnès Rocamora, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, UK

"There is no better guide to the shifting fortunes of Paris fashion than Valerie Steele. When Paris Fashion was first published in 1988, it changed the way in which fashion history was written and received. This third edition incorporates new perspectives and shows how the fashion culture of Paris has continued to evolve and adapt in a rapidly changing world. Informed, provocative, and accessible, it is a book that will continue to inspire future generations." - Christopher Breward, Edinburgh University, UK

"Valerie Steele’s Paris Fashion is indispensable reading for costume historians and style mavens, students of French culture and lovers of French arts de vivre. With matchless acuity, rigor, and verve, Dr. Steele shows how and why Paris emerged as the greatest fashion city in Western history. Paris Fashion is a triumph of scholarship and storytelling alike. If I could only own one book on fashion, this would unquestionably be it." - Caroline Weber, Columbia University, US

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0195044657
• ISBN 13: 9780195044652
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336