Behind the Seams - 9781350339798

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Behind the SeamsWomen, Fashion, and Work in 19th-Century France\nAuthor(s): Susan Hiner\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, United Kingdom\nImprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts\nISBN-13: 9781350339798, 978-1350339798\nSynopsis\nIn this highly original book, Susan E. Hiner looks behind fashions 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 womens 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.\n\nIn 19th-century France, fashion was a powerful and lucrative network that depended on womens expert manipulation of its raw materials. The delicate finger work of seamstresses and modistes yielded frothy dresses a.