FFS 281 - Fashioning the Capital

Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)

(Same as GNCS 281) The most iconic fashion looks may be timeless, but the fashion system as we currently know it was born in nineteenth-century France. Over the course of the century, Paris became the double-edged hub of a global fashion universe: simultaneously the clearinghouse of extracted colonial materials and the site of their extravagant transformation, the epicenter of capitalism’s consumer engine and of labor’s misery. In this course, conducted in English, we engage with the historical and cultural evolution of French fashion from the opulent final days of the Old Regime through the mid-century, shaped by hoops and bustles, to the early twentieth century’s bloomers and garçonnes. Through an analysis of literary and visual materials, alongside theoretical and historical texts, we analyze the burgeoning fashion system’s role in colonial expansion and exploitation, and as a tool for social mobility and democratization, gender construction, repression, and reform. Critical fashion studies provides a lens through which to understand the enduring power of this industry–both alluringly creative and nefariously destructive–that continues to shape our world of diminishing resources, fast fashion, and global exploitation, all corseted beneath the glitzy allure of beautiful gowns. Susan Hiner.

No knowledge of French is required.

Second six-week course.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS