num_pages: 328
description: In the turbulent political and social landscape of Revolutionary France dress played a major role in defining and displaying new identities. What people wore was in fact a vital symbol of their allegiances and beliefs. Drawing on a wide range of documentary and visual sources this book offers a vivid picture of the highly charged politics of Revolutionary appearances. The author explores the dynamic complexity of the new socio-political world where the identification of who stood for what was such an urgent if vexed issue: where identical items of dress could stand for opposing political ideologies where a variety of institutions - from local societies to the national assembly - tried to define the meanings associated with clothing and where the clothes a person wore could seal their fate. Tracing the stories surrounding the liberty cap the different manifestations of official dress the tricolore cockade and the sans-culotte provides a new and exciting insight into the complexities and uncertainties that made up life in Revolutionary France and the political culture that it created.
language: English
title: The Politics of Appearances: Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France
publisher: Berg Publishers