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Press Release | Opening Party | |||
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The Fashion and Textile History Gallery 1750-1899
Up until the end of the 18th century, fashion was a fairly reliable visual indicator of the wearer’s social rank. But fashion’s “Old Regime” was already coming to an end, as the aristocracy and gentry increasingly lost both their traditional monopoly on fashionable luxuries and their hold on political and economic power. Trade in textiles was one of the driving forces in European expansion, and the mechanization of textile production was the engine of the Industrial Revolution. Innovations in spinning and weaving technology, dyes, fabric printing, and other processes made a widening range of textiles available to the fashion industry at prices that an increasing number of people could afford. With the rise of capitalism and democracy, men’s fashions became more sober, but women’s clothes continued to be decorative. The making and selling of clothes changed dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century, as traditional crafts gave way, on the one hand, to the rise of readymade clothing and, on the other, to the development of the haute couture. Fashion magazines, patterns, and department stores made stylish clothing available to an ever-expanding population of consumers. Paris was the capital of women’s fashion, as London was of men’s.
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