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 actresses on the client rosters of the best fashion
houses--Charles Frederick Worth Doucet and Félix among others. She considers the mutual
dependence of couture and coiffure the participation of couturiers in international
expositions (with mixed financial results) the distinctive shopping practices of American
women which ranged from extensive transatlantic travel to quick trips downtown to the
department store the performance of conspicuous consumption at balls and soirées the impact
of American tariffs on the French fashion industry and the emergence of smuggling theft and
illicit copying of French fashions in the American market as the middle class emulated the
preferences of the rich. Lavishly illustrated with vibrant images of dresses portraits and
fashion plates Dressing Up reveals the power of American women in French couture. Winner of
the Aileen Ribeiro Grant of the Association of Dress Historians an Association for Art History
grant and a Pasold Research Fund grant.
