Dressing Up
The Women Who Influenced
French Fashion
Winner of the 2022 Victorian Society in America Book Award
How wealthy American women—as consumers and as influencers—helped shape French couture of the late nineteenth century
French fashion of the late nineteenth century is known for its allure, its ineffable chic—think of John Singer Sargent's Madame X and her scandalously slipping strap. For Parisian couturiers and their U.S. customers, it was also serious business. In Dressing Up, Elizabeth Block examines the couturiers' influential clientele—wealthy women in the United States who bolstered the French fashion industry with a steady stream of orders. Countering the usual narrative of the designer as solo creative genius, Block shows that these women—as high-volume customers and as pre-Internet influencers—were active participants in the era's transnational fashion system.
Book Details
Author: Elizabeth L. Block
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication date: October 19, 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 9780262045841
Ebook ISBN: 9780262365567
Winner of the 2022 Victorian Society in America Book Award
Shortlisted for the 2022 Association of Dress Historians Book of the Year
How Dressing Up Reframes Fashion History
Dressing Up shifts attention from the couturier as a solitary genius to the American clients, patrons, and consumers who actively shaped the transatlantic fashion system. It shows how women influenced French couture through their choices, relationships, purchasing power, and participation in the business and culture of dress.
Related Writing and Talks
Continue exploring American women, French couture, fashion commerce, and cultural influence through Elizabeth’s writing, lectures, and interviews.
Read “Lessons in Reuse From… French Couture?” · Explore speaking and media
About Elizabeth L. Block
Elizabeth L. Block, PhD is an award-winning art and culture historian, author, and speaker whose research examines fashion, beauty, material culture, and women’s influence in the nineteenth century.
Frequently
Asked
Questions
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Wealthy American women supported the French fashion industry through a steady stream of orders and helped shape couture through their tastes, relationships, purchasing power, and public influence. Rather than being passive consumers, they were active participants in the transatlantic fashion system.
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The book counters the familiar idea of the couturier as a solitary creative genius. Elizabeth shows that designers worked within a larger system shaped by clients, patrons, commerce, and culture—and that American women played an influential role in that system.
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Dressing Up focuses on French couture and its American clientele in the late nineteenth century, when fashion operated as both an art form and a serious transatlantic business.