Whether the paper doll is a girl or boy, celebrity or historical figure, these “stylish” pieces are advertisements for the latest fashion trends. Beyond play, they are objects that have taught children, throughout time, how to dress for life.
All tagged French Fashion
Smuggled in the Bustle
In the late nineteenth century, there was steady coverage in The New York Times about the act of dress smuggling. This act, often referred to as "fashionable smuggling,” involved the practice of smuggling European-made gowns and dress goods into the U.S. Whether a quick report or an in-depth exposé, the focus of each story is smuggling's relationship with the women involved, and of the women who were reported to have smuggled.
Oral History and Dress History: Monique Naudeix in 1960s Paris
Alongside the continual expansion of the ready-made clothing industry, women’s national position was indeterminate and peripheral, situated as they were at the end of a twenty-year period that saw no legislation for women’s rights (between suffrage in 1945 and the amendment of the marriage law in 1965). Imagery in the fashion press and distribution in boutiques foregrounded this new clothing culture, and symbolized the potential for women to shape their selves and lifestyles during a time in which their autonomy and agency hung in the balance.