Abstract

This essay explores George Sand’s (1804–1876) complicated relationship to clothing. The mythology surrounding her notorious cross-dressing has, we argue, occluded her real engagement with the culture of clothing of her time. While Sand was skeptical of fashion’s tendency to occupy women at the expense of other pursuits, she was nevertheless fluent in the language of fashion and strategically observed its rules of decorum. Drawing on Sand’s rich but unexploited correspondence (1812–1876) and other personal writings, this article contributes a rare first-person voice to the relatively spare literature on women’s lived experience of clothing in the past. Contemporary fashion journals, to which Sand subscribed, and portraits of her en homme and en femme are also considered. Emphasizing the collaborative and communal aspects of the culture of clothing in nineteenth-century France this study challenges the equation between consumerism and individuality that attended celebratory accounts of the history of consumer society. We examine Sand’s central role in a “community of dress,” an extensive network of people she called upon to help clothe herself and her family. Her fraught relationship to her daughter Solange (1828–1899), who was obsessed with fashionable dress, brings into focus the critical distance she maintained from the prevailing fashion culture.

摘要

这篇文章探讨了乔治·桑 (George Sand) (1804-1876) 与服装的复杂关系。我们认为，围绕着她臭名昭著的变装的神话已经掩盖了她对她那个时代服装文化的真正参与。尽管 Sand 对时尚以牺牲其他追求为代价来占据女性的倾向持怀疑态度，但她仍然精通时尚语言并战略性地遵守其礼仪规则。借鉴 Sand 丰富但未开发的通信（1812-1876 年）和其他个人著作，本文为过去关于女性服装生活经验的相对较少的文献提供了一种罕见的第一人称声音。Sand订阅的当代时尚杂志，以及她的男男女女肖像也被考虑。这项研究强调了 19 世纪法国服装文化的协作和公共方面，挑战了消费社会历史庆祝活动中消费主义与个性之间的等式。我们考察了 Sand 在“服装社区”中的核心作用，这是一个她呼吁帮助自己和家人穿衣服的广泛网络。她与痴迷于时尚服饰的女儿 Solange (1828-1899) 之间的关系令人担忧，这让她与流行的时尚文化保持着至关重要的距离。