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 s
