LIBERTY EQUALITY FASHION: THE WOMEN WHO STYLED THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

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LIBERTY EQUALITY FASHION
with Anne Higonnet
Tuesday, April 23 at 5 pm

While the motto of the French Revolution was “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” it might as well have been “Liberty, Equality, Fashion,” as Anne Higonnet argues in her groundbreaking new book of the same title Liberty Equality Fashion.

The history of the French Revolution is incomplete without the stories of three fashion-forward celebrities: Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France, Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe, and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals.

Anne Higonnet is a professor of art history at Barnard College and teaches an incredibly popular course on the history of clothing.

LIBERTY EQUALITY FASHION grew out of Higonnet’s class and archival research she did at the Morgan Library in Manhattan, where she discovered a complete set of Journal des dames et des modes fashion plates—the rarest fashion plates in the world—from the Revolutionary era. Providing the ultimate evidence for what was generally fashionable, week by week, during the years dominated by Joséphine, Térézia, and Juliette, the discovery of these plates upended the dominant understanding of the era.

From one year to the next, these fashion revolutionaries led a rebellion against corsets, petticoats, and enormous skirts. Their flowing garments not only embodied freedom for modern women, but also marked the emergence of global capitalism, shopping culture, and the rise of powerful style influencers. In their starred reviews, Publishers Weekly says the book is “as rigorous as it is fun” while Kirkus commends Higonnet’s “meticulous research [and] energetic prose.”

LIBERTY EQUALITY FASHION examines how politics, economics, and identity merged during the French Revolution and heralded a new feminism that is the antecedent to current, popular modes of self-expression and self-empowerment.