Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Fashion as a Social Problem

  • Chapter
Patriots Against Fashion

  • 312 Accesses

Abstract

Sartorial nationalism emerged from anxieties about fashion. From the seventeenth to the twentieth century European patriots saw fashion as a threat. Understanding sartorial nationalism therefore requires an introduction to what Anne Hollander has called “Anti-fashion.”2 Throughout this book, we will see that the cultural prejudices expressed in anti-fashion rhetoric correspond to exclusions in national concepts. Though social privilege permeates anti-fashion rhetoric, the main theme is sexism.

What makes mankind a pack of fools,

And with a tyrant’s scepter rules

The herd as though they were but mules?

“The Fashion.”

— Charles Hickling (1861).1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Charles Hickling, “The Fashion,” in: The Pleasures of Life, and Other Poems (Nottingham, 1861), 232.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes (Berkeley, 1975), 364–65.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Radu Stern, ed., Against Fashion: Clothing as Art, 1850–1930 (Boston, 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Henry van de Velde, “Die kunstlerische Hebung der Frauentracht” (Krefeld, 1900), in: Stern, Against Fashion, 128.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (London, 2005 [1985]), 48.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Myra MacDonald, Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media (London, 1995), 211.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Patricia Oder, Der Frauen neue Kleider: Das Reformkleid und die Konstruktion des modernen Frauenkörpers (Berlin, 2005), 91.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Ada Ballin, The Science of Dress in Theory and Practice (London, 1885), 27.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Joanne Hollows, “Fashion and Beauty Practices,” in: Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture (Manchester, 2000), 137–60;

    Google Scholar 

  10. Stella Mary Newton, Health, Art and Reason (London, 1974);

    Google Scholar 

  11. Patricia Ober, Der Frauen neue Kleider (Berlin, 2005);

    Google Scholar 

  12. Mary Wagener, “Fashion and Feminism in Fin de Siècle Vienna,” Woman’s Art Journal 10.2 (Autumn 1989-Winter 1990), 29–33;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Carin Schnitger, “Ijdelheid hoeft geen ondeugd te zijn: De Vereeniging voor Verbeetering van Vrouwenkleeding,” in: De eerste feministische golf (Nijmegen, 1985), 163–85;

    Google Scholar 

  14. Eva Uchaloá, Women’s Dress as an Expresion of Social Development in Bohemia (Budapest, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Ann Rosalind Jones, Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge, 2000), 178.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes and Fine Clothing (Baltimore, 2002), 96.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Alexander Martin, “Precarious Existences: Middling Households in Moscow and the Fire of 1812,” in: Siefert, Rieber, eds., Extending the Borders of Russian History (Budapest, 2003), 76.

    Google Scholar 

  18. LR Castell, “Ein neuer Rock,” in: Wiener Lebensbilder (Vienna, 1844), 228–29.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Leigh Hunt, “A Chapter on Hats,” Essays (London, 1841), 56.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Petko Slavejkov, “Pismo na edno desetgodishno dete koeto sega prŭv pŭt e doshlo v Tsarigrad,” in Gajda 1.18 (1864), cited from: Sonia Baeva, ed., Sŭchinenia (Sofia, 1973), 5:334. Thanks to Svetlana Doncheva for this reference and translation.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Augusta Hall [as Lady Llanover], ed., Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delaney (London, 1862), 2:310.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Ludwig Foglar, “Gegen Frack und Hut,” Wiener Sonntagsblätter 7.19/8 (1848), 322.

    Google Scholar 

  23. See Dafydd Jones, “Can Newydd, sef fflangell geiniog, i chwipio y cylchau o beisiau y Merched” (no publishing data, c. 1850), available from University of Wales, Bangor, Llyfrau Prin /Rare Books — Cerddi Bangor 22 (163).

    Google Scholar 

  24. Bayard Taylor, Travels in Greece and Russia (New York, 1859), 363.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Catriona Kelly, “‘Better Halves’? Representations of Women in Russian Urban Popular Entertainments, 1870–1910,” in: Linda Harriet Edmondson, ed., Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union (Cambridge, 1992), 17; Kelly cites Noveishii Pesennik, perhaps the Noveiishii polnyi russkii piesennik (Moscow, 1854), 336.

    Google Scholar 

  26. See Petko Slavejkov, “Prochitame v ‘Kurie d’Orian’,” in: Sŭchinenia (Sofia, 1978), 2:354.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Jennifer Michell Jones, Sexing la Mode (Oxford, 2004), 147–48.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  28. See El duende especulativo, no. 1–2 (1761) 1–27, 329–50; cited from Sally Ann Kitts, The Debate on the Nature, Role and Influence of Women in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Lewiston, 1995), 119.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Julie Crawford, Marvelous Protestantism: Monstrous Births in Post-Reformation England (Baltimore, 2005), 46.

    Google Scholar 

  30. M. Cruz García de Enterría, “El cuerpo entre predicadores y copleros,” in: Augustin Redondo, ed., Le corps dans la société espagnole des XVI at XVII siècles (Paris, 1990), 235–36;

    Google Scholar 

  31. cited from Gabriel Guarino, “Regulation of Appearances During the Catholic Reformation,” in: Zinguer, Yardeni, eds., Les Deux Réformes Chrétiennes: Propagation et Diffusion (Leiden, 2004), 499.

    Google Scholar 

  32. On moralist anti-fashion, see Aileen Ribeiro, Dress and Morality (Oxford, 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  33. Cited from Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (London, 1996), 234.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  34. Alfred Grévin, “La première des crinolines fut un feuille de figurer,” Filles d’Eve (Paris, 1887), cited and reproduced in Menon, Evil by Design, 47.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Cited from Daniel Purdy, “Sculptured Soldiers and the Beauty of Discipline,” in: Henn, Pausch, eds., Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe (Amsterdam, 2003), 23.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Morag Martin, “Doctoring Beauty: The Medical Control of Women’s Toilettes in France, 1750–1820,” Medical History 49.3 (2005), 352–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Akim Charukovskij, Narodnaya meditsyna (St. Petersburg, 1844), 329,

    Google Scholar 

  38. cited from Catriona Kelly, Refining Russia (Oxford, 2001), 123.

    Google Scholar 

  39. P Anon., Health for the Million; with Observations on unhealthy Employments (London, 1858), 75.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Georg Friedrich Most, Moderner Todtentanz, oder die Schnürbrüste, auch Corsettes (Hanover: Helwing, 1824), also available in Dutch as Het Keurslijf of Korset (Zwolle, 1831); Carl Otto, Kvindelegemet og Korsettet (Copenhagen, 1906);

    Google Scholar 

  41. Ludovic O’Followell, Le Corset, Histoire, médecine, hygène (Paris, 1908); Samuel von Sömmering, Über die Wirkungen der Schnürbrüste (Leipzig, 1793); Henri-Victor Bouvier, Études historiques et médicales sur l’usage des corsets (Paris, 1853); Alexandre Layet, Dangers de l’usage des corsets et des buses (Paris, 1827); Corbin, “Des effets produits par les corsets sur les organes de l’abdomen,” Gazette médicale de Paris (1830);

    Google Scholar 

  42. George Henry Lewis, The Physiology of Common Life (Edinburgh, 1859), 367–68; Wilberforce Smith, “Corset-Wearing: The Medical Side of the Attack,” Aglaia (Spring 1894), 31–35.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  43. Edward Bradley [as Cuthbert Bede], “The Tyrant Fashion and Alamode his Wife,” in: The Shilling Book of Beauty (London, 1858), 57.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Paul Schultze-Naumberg, Die Kultur des Weiblichen Körpers als Grundlage der Frauenkleidung (Leipzig, 1901), 152.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Friedrich Theodor Frerichs, A Clinical Treatiese on Diseases of the Liver (London, 1861), 1:45.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Hedwig Dohm, “Kindheitserrinerungen einer altern Berlinerin,” in: Ida Boy, ed., Als unsere große Dichterinnen noch kleine Mädchen waren (Leipzig, 1912), 33;

    Google Scholar 

  47. Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Jones, Respectibility and Deviance: Nineteenth-Century German Woman Writers and the Ambiguity of Representation (Chicago, 1998), 135.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Fred Davis, Fashion, Culture and Identity (Chicago, 1992), 175.

    Google Scholar 

  49. See Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890–1930 (Chicago, 2003), 59.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, 1974), 595.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Valerie Steele, The Corset: A Cultural History (New Haven, 2001);

    Google Scholar 

  52. Sally Wheeler, “Going Shopping,” in: Linda Mulcahy, Sally Wheeler, Feminist Perspectives on Contract Law (London, 2005), 37–38.

    Google Scholar 

  53. Orson Fowler, Intemperance and Tight-lacing (New York, 1846; Manchester, c. 1890).

    Google Scholar 

  54. E.M. King of Gentleman’s Magazine, 1880, cited from: Stella Mary Newton, Health, Art and Reason (London, 1974), 125.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Moritz Platen, “Weib als Gattungswesen,” in Die Neue Heilmethode (Berlin, 1928), 195–97, cited from Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty, 59.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Madame de la Santé, The Corset Defended (London, 1865).

    Google Scholar 

  57. Andrzej Wolan, O wolności Rzeczypospolitej albo szlacheckiej (Vilnius, 1606); cited from Maria Bogucka, Women in Early Modern Polish Society (Aldershot, 2004), 99; Bocucka provides several similar passages from other Polish thinkers.

    Google Scholar 

  58. Cited from Jennifer Michell Jones, Sexing la Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France (Oxford, 2004), 147.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  59. Thoma Sergiescu, Femeea virtuoasa soŭ celle trei epoce alle femei (Bucharest, 1868), 37.

    Google Scholar 

  60. Rebecca Messbarger, The Century of Women: Representations of Women in Eighteenth-Century Italian Public Discourse (Toronto, 2002), 17; see also Kitts, The Debate on the Nature, Role and Influence of Women, 117–24; 75–76.

    Google Scholar 

  61. Rebecca Haidt, “The Name of the Clothes: Petimetras and the Problem of Luxury’s Refinements,” Dieciochio 23.1 (Spring 2000), 75.

    Google Scholar 

  62. Palmira Brummett, “Dressing for Revolution: Mother, Nation, Citizen and Subversive in the Ottoman Satirical Press,” in: Zehra Arat, Deconstructing Images of ‘the Turkish Woman’ (New York, 2000), 53.

    Google Scholar 

  63. Christopher Breward, The Hidden Consumer: Masculinities, Fashion and City Life, 1860–1914 (Manchester, 1999), 2.

    Google Scholar 

  64. John Evelyn, Tyrannus, or the Mode (London, 1661); cited from William Bray, ed., Memoirs Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn (New York, 1870), 751.

    Google Scholar 

  65. Judity Vowles, “The ‘Feminization’ of Russian Literature: Women, Language and Literature in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” in: Clyman, Greene, eds., Women Writers in Russian Literature (Westport, 1994), 38.

    Google Scholar 

  66. Sidney Donnell, Feminizing the Enemy (Lewisburg, 2003), 26.

    Google Scholar 

  67. Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge, 1997), 101.

    Google Scholar 

  68. On military fashion and dandyism, see Philip Hoare, “I love a Man in Uniform: The Dandy Esprit de Corps,” Fashion Theory 9.3 (2005), 263–82;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  69. Bernard James, Roger Beaumont, “The Law of Military Plumage,” Transition 39 (October 1971), 24–27;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  70. Alison Matthews David, “Decorated Men: Fashioning the French Soldier, 1852–1914,” Fashion Theory 7.1 (2003), 23–37.

    Google Scholar 

  71. Geoffrey Treasure, The Making of Modern Europe, 1648–1780 (London, 2003 [1985]), 213.

    Google Scholar 

  72. Daniel Purdy, “Sculptured Soldiers and the Beauty of Discipline,” in: Henn, Pausch, eds., Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe (Amsterdam, 2003), 27.

    Google Scholar 

  73. Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Du Dandyisme et de George Brummell (Paris, 1844), published in English as Of Dandyism and of George Brummell (New York, 1988);

    Google Scholar 

  74. Carol Franzero, The Life and Times of Beau Brummell (London, 1958);

    Google Scholar 

  75. Hubert Cole, Beau Brummell (London, 1977);

    Google Scholar 

  76. Ian Kelly, Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Dandy (London, 2005).

    Google Scholar 

  77. Brummell’s papers have also been published, see Melville Lewis, ed., Beau Brummell: His Life and Letters (New York, 1925).

    Google Scholar 

  78. See Hilary Whelan, Fashion Discourse in Baudelaire’s “Le Peintre de la vie moderne” and Mallarmé’s “La dernière mode” (New York, 1999);

    Google Scholar 

  79. Bernard Howells, Baudelaire: Individualism, Dandyism and the Philosophy of History (Oxford, 1996);

    Google Scholar 

  80. Ernest Ranaud, Baudelaire et la religion du Dandysme (Paris, 1918); Philip Hadlock, “The Other Other: Baudelaire, Melancholia and the Dandy,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 30 (2001);

    Google Scholar 

  81. Lynette Black, “Baudelaire as Dandy: Artifice and the Search for Beauty,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 17.1–2 (1988–89), 186–95.

    Google Scholar 

  82. Susanne Schmid, “Byron and Wilde: The Dandy and the Public Sphere,” in: Uwe Bökeret et al., The Importance of Reinventing Oscar (Amsterdam, 2002), 81–89;

    Google Scholar 

  83. Talia Schaffer, “Fashioning Aestheticism by Aestheticizing Fashion: Wilde, Beerbohm and the Male Aesthetes’ Sartorial Codes,” Victorian Literature and Culture 28 (2000), 39–54;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  84. Edoard Roditi, Oscar Wilde: Dichter und Dandy (Munich, 1947);

    Google Scholar 

  85. Eike Schönfeld, Der deformierte Dandy (Frankfurt, 1986);

    Google Scholar 

  86. Alfred Recoulley, Oscar Wilde, The Dandy-Artist: A Study of Dandyism in the Works of Oscar Wilde (Chapel Hill, 1968);

    Google Scholar 

  87. Sam Driver, “The Dandy in Pushkin,” Slavic and East European Journal 29.3 (Autumn 1985), 243–57;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  88. Sebastian Neumeister, Der Dichter als Dandy: Kafka, Baudelaire, Thomas Bernhard (Munich, 1973).

    Google Scholar 

  89. Simone François, Le dandysme et Marcel Proust (Brussels, 1956).

    Google Scholar 

  90. Maureen O’Conner, “Edna O’Brien, Irish Dandy,” Irish Studies Review 13.4 (2005), 469–77;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  91. Daniel Whitaker, “La quimera of Emilia Pardo Bazan,” Hispania 70.4 (December 1987), 746–51;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  92. Vittorio Martinelli, La guerra di D’Annunzio: da poeta e dandy a eroe di guerra e “comandante” (Udine, 2001);

    Google Scholar 

  93. Susanna Rossbach, Des Dandys Wort als Waffe (Tübingen, 2002);

    Book  Google Scholar 

  94. August Sarnitz, Adolf Loos, 1870–1933: Architekt Kulturkritiker, Dandy (Cologne, 2003);

    Google Scholar 

  95. Robert Pynsent, “A Czech Dandy: An Introduction to Arthur Breisky,” Slavonic and East European Review 51.125 (October 1973), 517–23;

    Google Scholar 

  96. Joseph Remenyi, “Dezso Kosztolanyi, Hungarian Homo Aestheticus,” American Slavic and East European Review 5.1/2 (May 1946), 188–203.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  97. Marie-Christine Natta, La grandeur sans convictions: essai sur le dandysme (Paris, 1991);

    Google Scholar 

  98. Ellen Moers, The Dandy (New York, 1960);

    Google Scholar 

  99. George Waiden, Who is a Dandy? (London, 2002);

    Google Scholar 

  100. Patrik Favardin, Laurent Boueiere, Le dandysme (Lyon, 1988);

    Google Scholar 

  101. Roger Kempf, Sur le dandyisme (Paris, 1971).

    Google Scholar 

  102. On dandyism in England, see Peter McNeil, “Macaroni Masculiniites,” Fashion Theory 4.4 (2000), 373–403;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  103. Peter McNeil, “‘That Doubtful Gender’: Macaroni Dress and Male Sexualities,” Fashion Theory 3.4 (1999), 411–47;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  104. on dandyism in France, see John Prevost, Le Dandysme en France (Paris, 1957);

    Google Scholar 

  105. Remy Saisselin, “Dandyism and Honnêteté,” The French Review 29.6 (May 1956), 457–60;

    Google Scholar 

  106. on dandyism in Russia, see Olga Vainshtein, “Russian Dandyism,” in: Barbara Evans Clements et al., eds., Russian Masculinities in History and Culture (London, 2001), 51–75;

    Google Scholar 

  107. Tomi Huttunen, “Understanding Explosion: The Case of the Russian Dandy,” Slavica Helsingiensia 35 (2008), 68–76;

    Google Scholar 

  108. on Dandyism in the Habsburg lands, see Mark Anderson, Kafka’s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de Siècle (Oxford, 1992);

    Google Scholar 

  109. Michael Burri, “Lieutenant Burda and the Combative Ethos of the Aristocrat’ in fin-de-siècle Vienna,” German Studies Review 18.1 (February 1995), 9–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  110. Jules Barbey d’Aureville, Du dandyisme et de George Brummell (Paris, 1986), 105;

    Google Scholar 

  111. cited from Charles Bernheimer, “The Politics of Aversion in Theory,” in: Thaïs Morgan, ed., Men Writing the Feminine (Albany, 1994), 175.

    Google Scholar 

  112. Leora Auslander, Taste and Power (Berkeley, 1996), 248.

    Google Scholar 

  113. Juan Sempere y Guarinos, Ensayo de una biblioteca española de lose mejores escritores del reinado de Carols III (Madrid, 1969 [1785–89]), 4:185.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Victoria University, New Zealand

    Alexander Maxwell (Senior Lecturer)

Authors
  1. Alexander Maxwell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2014 Alexander Maxwell

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Maxwell, A. (2014). Fashion as a Social Problem. In: Patriots Against Fashion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137277145_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137277145_2

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-44698-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-27714-5

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation