Professor Anne Higonnet will present her new book
Liberty Equality Fashion
The Women Who Styled the French Revolution
During 1789’s other French Revolution, fashion underwent the most sudden, total, and brief change in history. This clothing revolution was led by three women: Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France, Terézia Tallien, reputed the most beautiful woman in Europe, and Juliette Récamier, iconic muse of intellectuals and equal rights advocates. What has writing a history organized around such personalities, for a trade press, entailed? What are the purposes and challenges of telling a story that reaches the pages of Vogue or Town & Country? At a time when the Humanities are said to be in crisis, what tactics might we experiment with?
