The Modern Venus: Dress, Underwear and Accessories in the Late 18th-Century Atlantic World by Gernerd, Elisabeth

The Modern Venus: Dress, Underwear and Accessories in the Late 18th-Century Atlantic World (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781350293373)

Vendor: Elisabeth Gernerd
Product type: Books
Format: Paperback
$37.95
$37.95
$37.95
Subtotal: $37.95
The Modern Venus: Dress, Underwear and Accessories in the Late 18th-Century Atlantic World by Gernerd, Elisabeth

The Modern Venus: Dress, Underwear and Accessories in the Late 18th-Century Atlantic World

$37.95
The Modern Venus: Dress, Underwear and Accessories in the Late 18th-Century Atlantic World by Gernerd, Elisabeth

The Modern Venus: Dress, Underwear and Accessories in the Late 18th-Century Atlantic World

$37.95
Format: Paperback
Description
Description
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From rumps and stays to muffs and handkerchiefs, underwear and accessories were critical components of the 18th-century woman's wardrobe. They not only created her shape, but expressed her character, sociability, fashionability, and even political allegiances. These so-called ephemeral flights of fashion were not peripheral and supplementary, but highly charged artefacts, acting as cultural currency in contemporary society.

The Modern Venus highlights the significance of these elements of a woman's wardrobe in 1770s and 1780s Britain and the Atlantic World, and shows how they played their part in transforming fashionable dress when this was expanding to new heights and volumes. Dissecting the female silhouette into regions of the body and types of dress and shifting away from a broad-sweeping stylistic evolution, this book explores these potent players within the woman's armoury. Marrying material, archival and visual approaches to dress history, and drawing on a rich range of sources - including painted portraiture, satirical prints, diaries, memoirs - The Modern Venus unpacks dress as a medium and mediator in women's lives. It demonstrates the importance of these overlooked garments in defining not just a woman's silhouette, but also her social and cultural situation, and thereby shapes our understanding of late 18th-century life.

With over 125 color images, The Modern Venus is a remarkable resource for scholars, students and costume lovers alike.

Author: Elisabeth Gernerd
ISBN-10: 1350293377
ISBN-13: 9781350293373
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Language: English
Published: 11/16/2023
Pages: 280
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.69h x 7.44w x 1.00d
By Elisabeth Gernerd
By Elisabeth Gernerd
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Elisabeth Gernerd is a historian of 18th-century dress, art and material culture. She is Lecturer in Design Cultures at De Montfort University, UK, and former postdoctoral fellow at Historic Royal Palaces, UCLA, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

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