Behind the Seams

Women, Fashion, and Work in 19th-Century France

Susan Hiner (Vassar College, USA)

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English

Bloomsbury Visual Arts
30 November 2023

History of fashion; Material culture; Fashion & society

In this highly original book, Susan E. 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 century 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.

In 19th-century France, fashion was a powerful and lucrative network that depended on women’s expert manipulation of its raw materials. The delicate finger work of seamstresses and modistes yielded frothy dresses and ethereal hats; the subtle, persuasive rhetoric of written chronicles resulted in savvy, targeted marketing campaigns of goods and lifestyles; and the stylized visual splendour of the detailed drawing, engraving, and painting of fashion plates fed an aspirational fantasy that ended in consumption.

Yet this fashion system paradoxically effaced many of the women on whom it depended. Rather than repeating the familiar narrative of women as victims of fashion, Behind the Seams tells a more complicated story. Hiner’s close examination reveals the productive women workers, writers, and artists who achieved agency, influence, and active careers even as their work and lives were masked by the ways in which they were mythologized in popular culture, rendered anonymous, and marginalized by institutional exclusion.

Beautifully illustrated in colour throughout, Behind the Seams is a rich resource and essential reading for all those interested in fashion history, 19th-century French history and visual culture, and the social history of women.

By: Susan Hiner (Vassar College USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 244mm, Width: 188mm, Spine: 14mm
Weight: 800g
ISBN: 9781350339798
ISBN 10: 1350339792
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 30 November 2023
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Susan Hiner is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Vassar College working at the intersection of literature, visual culture, and cultural history of women. She is the author of Accessories to Modernity (2010) and numerous articles pertaining to nineteenth-century French culture. She was awarded an NEH grant for 2016-17 to advance her new book Behind the Seams.

Reviews for Behind the Seams: Women, Fashion, and Work in 19th-Century France

This outstanding study, rich in newly discovered archival materials, illuminates the pathways to professionalization forged by skilled women hatmakers, journalists, and illustrators… Brilliant analyses by Hiner, one of today’s leading fashion scholars, make this beautifully illustrated book a must-read. * Heidi Brevik-Zender, University of California, Riverside, USA * Hiner’s beautifully illustrated book takes us behind the shop windows and into the workshops, salons and studios of the women who made Paris fashion famous in the nineteenth century ... A must read for everyone interested in the hidden histories of fashion. * Alison Matthews David, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada * An original and significant contribution to our understanding of women's lives in 19th-century France. * Valerie Steele, Museum at FIT, USA * This beautifully illustrated volume explores the hidden work of women who produced or promoted female fashion in nineteenth-century France. With astute readings of text and image Hiner uncovers, in fascinating detail, a different reality beneath the frothy glamour of silk and lace. * Anne Green, King’s College London, UK * Susan Hiner’s innovative study uncovers the invisible world of the women at the heart of the French fashion industry in the nineteenth century… She truly takes us behind the seams of hidden women’s work by providing the reader with otherwise forgotten historical documents. This book is essential for those interested in nineteenth-century cultural history and women’s roles in nineteenth-century society, and for those studying class and gender ideologies in this period. * French Studies *