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Historians Denis Bruna and Chloé Demey sign a collective work in which they retrace the history of fashion and clothing from the Middle Ages to the present, a first since 1965. Far from being an object for experts or " Fashion Victims ", History of Fashion and Clothing, from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century, is aimed at all those who are interested in society in general and sociology, with a critical eye moreover.
Seven authors took up the daunting challenge of going back over 600 years of clothing habits. Curated by Denis Bruna and Chloé Demey, the young researchers Astrid Castres, Pierre-Jean Desemerie, Sophie Lemahieu, Anne-Cécile Moheng and Bastien Salva led a project that had not been taken to France on such a scale since 1965. François Boucher had then published his anthology Histoire du Costume in the West .
Nevertheless, in this new work that has just appeared at Editions Textuel, the authors go beyond the chronological narrative. " We wanted to publish the book that we would have liked to read and which is addressed to everyone. Non-specialists, people curious about history, shapes, clothing, culture and society in general, "explains Chloé Demey.
Straighten the bodies to stand out
According to the authors, men and women were dressed in the same way in the West until the 1330s. Hence the choice of authors to start their research after this date, in order to study the specificities of gender which have marked the history of dress habits thereafter.
We also understand how, between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, the bodies of children were corseted almost from birth, in order to recover early. " It was for the aristocracy a way of distinguishing itself by this righteousness and verticality of the common people, who could not wear this kind of clothes, because they had to work in the fields and in the streets. As a result, their bodies were much rounder and more flexible, curved and counter-curved, with much larger clothes , "points out Denis Bruna, who approaches class and gender issues in his own way.
This critical view of society is also present in the chapters on the influence of large luxury groups, the contribution of new technologies or the impact of fashion in the environment. Not to mention the globalized origins of the Society of Ambiancers and Elegant People (SAPE). This fashion changed the colors of the streets of Kinshasa and Brazzaville in the 1960s, before inspiring creators like the British Paul Smith in 2010.
Fashion beyond brands
Rich with more than 400 historical images and rather short texts on each chapter - chronological amplitude requires - this project is different from the " coffee table books ". These beautiful books, which invade the bookstores, are sometimes produced by the own luxury claws as a real tool of communication.
" It's not a brand book ," insists Chloé Demey. Even if the great creators are mentioned here, from the British Charles Frederick Worth - the father of haute couture - to the " post-modern " Dutchman Iris van Herpen, the usual name dropping in this area has been avoided. " We wanted to relativize the place of brands in relation to the use of clothing in the general population, " says Chloé Demey, for whom " brands are just an epiphenomenon put forward by the magazine and very related to marketing ".
Denis Bruna often reminds his students at the École du Louvre, where he teaches, that one must be wary of the distorting mirror produced by the fashion press. " I often tell them : buy a fashion magazine and then take the subway or the bus. You will rarely see people dressed in transport as they are in the fashion magazine .
The fashion of the elites, but also that of the people
It is also for this reason that the historian is not satisfied with the adornments of the elites, as is often the case in this type of work. " We did not want to talk about fashion, but fashion, and show that we have to dress in all groups of society, " he says.
Thus, the nineteenth century is not abstract to the aristocracy or contemporary fashion to luxury ready-to-wear and haute couture. The proof of the pages where we rediscover the history of jeans and t-shirt, treated with the same rigor as that of the tailor Bar Christian Dior. Not to mention a very rich part about the maintenance of clothes, the way it has been stored over the years, until shake in modern washing machines at Mr. and Mrs. lambda.
History of Fashion and Clothing - From the Middle Ages to the Twenty-first Century , by Textuel Publishing , 504 pages.