The aesthetics of hygiene : aesthetic dress, modernity, and the body as sign

Author

Montague, Ken

Document type

Article (journal)

Language

English

Source

Journal of design history. 1994, Num. 2, Vol. 7, 91-112, 18 ill.

ISSN

0952-4649

Abstract (en)

Discusses some features of late-Victorian costume and dress reform in light of a number of related discourses on the body and its appearance. Those discourses--aesthetic and medical, social and anthropological--find a point of convergence in the last quarter of the 19th c. in a fundamental redesign of the ideal female figure, displacing the harsh, constricting curves of the corset and the cuirass with the more flexible, serpentine curvature of the body of modernity. Suggests that such a transformation registers both a change in the position of women and also, with the onset of modernity, a radical reconfiguration of the elements of visuality: of appearance and meaning, surface and depth, expression and mystique, design and desire.

Subject (en)

• General history of art -- 1800-1945 -- Decorative arts -- Textiles and costume
• Costume
• Great Britain
• 1800-1900
• Aesthetic movement
• Hygiene
• Modernity
• Human figure
• Women
• Femininity
• Ideology

Subject (fr)

• Histoire générale de l'art -- 1800-1945 -- Arts décoratifs -- Textiles et costume
• Costume
• Grande-Bretagne
• 1800-1900
• Aesthetic movement
• Hygiène
• Modernité
• Corps humain
• Femmes
• Féminité
• Idéologie

Origin

DatabaseBHA (Inist-CNRS/GRI)

Identifier19950401-00312443

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