The force of fashion in politics and society: global perspectives from early modern to contemporary times - Edited by Beverly Lemire

Beverly Lemire , ed. , The force of fashion in politics and society: global perspectives from early modern to contemporary times ( Aldershot : Ashgate , 2010 . Pp. xviii + 280 . 3 figs. 2 maps. 4 tables. 28 illus. ISBN 9781409404927 Hbk. £60/$119.95 ) Why is fashion so often ignored by historians? This is the question that Lemire poses in the polemical introduction to this new collection, which attempts to change this state of affairs. Fashion's past, according to Lemire, has been left to art historians and museum curators. It needs to engage with wider historical perspectives. The field continues to be shaped by arguments about emulation and conspicuous consumption derived from Veblen, which need to be re-examined. This collection is made up of work by historians and anthropologists. The articles are all of high quality and successfully integrate fashion into wider global histories. Fashion is defined here as meaning clothes, textiles, furniture, and other objects; in other words, material culture. There are three sections, each with three articles. The first deals with early modern Europe. Ilja Van Damme examines the ‘fashion revolution’ in Antwerp. It would be easy to explain consumer patterns in the southern Netherlands in terms of deference to French taste and culture. However, Van Damme points to the roles of tradesmen in influencing fashion cycles and argues that the ‘fashion revolution’ was based on a complex negotiation between consumers and retailers (thus raising questions about Veblen's model of emulation in fashion diffusion). The ‘social life of textiles’ (p. 62) in the early modern household is treated by Giorgio Riello. His approach shows an admirable concern with the methodological implications of analysing material culture and, in particular, the ways we consider the materiality and agency of objects (including textiles) in the home. Riello posits a contrast between durable possessions such as buildings and transient possessions such as clothes; he interprets domestic textiles as an intermediate category. Belén Moreno Claverias disputes the notion that fashion was unknown in the lives of the poor through an impressive study of peasant inventories in eighteenth-century rural Catalan. She provides evidence to show that peasant consumption was shaped by issues of taste and choice, which undermines any notion that fashion was alien to the lives of the poor. The middle section is made up of articles about the long nineteenth century. Eugénie Briot describes the Parisian market for perfumery. She argues that perfume is the exception to Alain Corbin's emphasis on the way modernity created an olfactory regime that strove to reduce smell. Briot explores the way that perfume was fashioned and marketed (mainly to women); for example, the way in which ‘the price itself was . . . part of the image of the product’ (p. 112). Briot's analysis works best when she dwells on the ephemerality of perfume, which ‘represents a product of pure consumption, in the sense that its very use wastes it away in a short time’ (pp. 100–1). Another kind of female economy is considered by Alice Taylor in her treatment of the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar. Women functioned both as producers and consumers by selling goods such as anti-slavery reticules and potholders. Women who sewed in the abolitionist cause ‘became explicitly aware of the needle's political influence’ (p. 121) and their message was more powerful because it was conveyed through the production of ordinary domestic objects. Fashion was also political in nineteenth-century Nigeria, the subject of Colleen E. Kriger's article. Islamic tradition frowned on the wearing of silk. Kriger's research, however, shows that in practice Muslim men could wear silk. This is one of the few articles that approaches clothes as a text that needs deconstruction. The third section of the book concentrates on the present and comprises studies by anthropologists. Cory Wilmott examines Amerindian fashion in Canada. She finds that producers have employed strategies that combine traditional and contemporary images of native American identity. What is essential is the employment of native Americans in the production process. B. Lynne Milgram studies women workers in the Philippines who retrieve and recycle discarded objects such as juice boxes as fashionable objects. This form of artisan production is shaped by workers becoming attuned to international taste and design techniques. Finally, Karen Tranberg Hansen explores the consumption of clothing in Zambia. Africans are knowing consumers of clothing, appropriating western styles to local sensibilities. The articles in the book do not speak to each other, which is a shame. For example, the articles by Claverias and Hansen fit together in interesting ways. There is a real need to renew the dialogue between historians and anthropologists that was so marked in the 1960s. However, there is a strong interdisciplinary feel to many of the articles and they demonstrate the value of a global approach to the subject. All share a strong sense of the competing forces that shape fashion and provide sophisticated forms of analysis to interpret it.

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