SHAPING FEMININITY

Shaping Femininity is the first large-scale study of the materiality, production, consumption and meanings of foundation garments for women in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, when the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. It was this structured female silhouette first achieved in sixteenth-century fashionable dress using garments called bodies and farthingales, that existed in various extremes in Western Europe and beyond in the form of stays, corsets, hoop skirts and crinolines until the twentieth century. With a nuanced approach that incorporates transdisciplinary methodologies and a stunning array of visual and written sources, the book reorients discussions about female foundation garments in English and wider European history. It argues that these objects of material culture helped to shape and define changing notions of the female body and of beauty ideals, social status, sexuality and modesty in early modern England, and thus influenced enduring western notions of femininity. Beautifully illustrated in full colour throughout, this book offers a fascinating insight into dress and fashion in the early modern period, and offers much of value to all those interested in the history of early modern women and gender, material culture, and the history of the body, as well as curators and reconstructors.