Dressing Up - The Women Who Influenced French Fashion

How wealthy American women--as consumers and as influencers--helped shape French couture of the late nineteenth century; lavishly illustrated.

French fashion of the late nineteenth century is known for its allure, its ineffable chic--think of John Singer Sargent''s Madame X and her scandalously slipping strap. For Parisian couturiers and their American customers, it was also serious business. In Dressing Up, Elizabeth Block examines the couturiers'' influential clientele--wealthy American women who bolstered the French fashion industry with a steady stream of orders from the United States. Countering the usual narrative of the designer as solo creative genius, Block shows that these women--as high-volume customers and as pre-Internet influencers--were active participants in the era''s transnational fashion system.

Block describes the arrival of nouveau riche Americans on the French fashion scene, joining European royalty, French socialites, and famous