Chapter: All Tied Up: The Cravat and the Evolution of Men’s Fashion in Nineteenth-Century France
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Description
This chapter appears in the book, Fashion: Exploring Critical Issues. Edited by Barbara Brownie, Laura Pettican, and Johannes Reponen.
Chapter abstract: During the final years of the Bourbon Restoration in France in the 1820s, a surprising and inordinate number of guides and manuals appeared in print contending that the cravat was the most important element of men’s fashion. In ephemeral works like Cravatiana, (1823), L’Art de Mettre sa Cravate (1827), Le Code de la Cravate (1828), and Manuel de l’homme du Monde, Guide Complet de la Toilette et du Bon Ton (1828), among many others, the male reader was instructed on all aspects of the cravat - its history, the choice of an appropriate cravat according to the occasion, and illustrated directions on how to tie as many as forty-one types of cravats then current. This chapter will analyse these manuals and demonstrate how they are emblematic not only of this pivotal moment in men’s fashion, but also relate to greater social and cultural changes in nineteenth-century France. These texts will be contextualised by discussing their relationship to trends in men’s fashion in France in the first two decades of the century, specifically the transformation of the extravagant fashions of the Directory incroyables into the understated elegance of the fashionables of the 1820s, a French variant influenced by English dandy on the continent. This chapter will then analyse how these manuals discursively function as social commentary, discussing their conception the cravat as a mark of individuality in a society increasingly dominated by a lack of sartorial distinction. Finally, this chapter will demonstrate how the cravat during this period can ultimately be understood as an expression of class conflict and mobility as the emergent bourgeoisie attempted to imitate and distinguish itself from the Ancien Régime’s aristocracy in the use of this unique and increasingly marginalised accessory of nineteenth century men’s fashion.
ISBN
9781848881488
Publication Date
2012
Publisher
Brill - current publisher
City
Boston
Keywords
Cravat, Bourbon Restoration, Men’s fashion, Balzac, Bourgeoisie
Disciplines
Cultural History | Fashion Design
Recommended Citation
Koos, Leonard R., "Chapter: All Tied Up: The Cravat and the Evolution of Men’s Fashion in Nineteenth-Century France" (2012). Modern Languages & Literatures Books. 12.
https://scholar.umw.edu/modernlanguages_books/12