Fashion and the Reinvention of Court Costume in Portrayals of Josephine de Beauharnais (1794-1809)

Tür:

Kitap Bölümü

Yazar:

Susan L. Siegfried

Yayın yılı:

2011

Yayıncı:

Publications de l’Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion

Dil:

fr

During her reign as Empress of the French (1804-09), an image was fashioned for Josephine Bonaparte as simultaneously an empress and a woman of fashion. This blurred the traditional boundary between court costume and la mode, which had never been rigidly maintained but which acquired a new fluidity with the political and economic circumstances of the Napoleonic Empire. The insistent modernity of Josephine’s coronation costume is examined along with its emphasis on historical symbolism. No two official portraits of Josephine agree on the representation of her imperial costume, thus being indicative of the changeability of fashion in the modern sense having invaded the court wardrobe. The article also examines paintings of Josephine produced during her reign which dispensed with imperial regalia, yet were very ambitious artistically or were publicly exhibited. They attest to deep divisions between representations of her public and private personae and were symptomatic of an evolution in the ideology of the female ruler of France.

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