National Fashionism: Queen Fashion as Patriot

Abstract

While dreams of a uniform national costume haunted European patriotic imaginations during the Enlightenment, repeated attempts to create an actual costume floundered. As the nineteenth century progressed, European patriots abandoned the goal of an unchanging national costume and a different approach to sartorial nationalism took its place. Proponents of what might be called “national fashionism” accepted that clothing styles would change, but continued to reject foreign imports. Instead of trying to prohibit all fashion, however, they advocated fashionable clothing of domestic manufacture and, less importantly, domestic design. Members of the nation could thus wear fashionable clothes while still differentiating themselves from foreigners. National fashionism has roots in the eighteenth century, but came to dominate sartorial nationalism by the middle of the nineteenth.

Fashion is the proper sphere of the female sex, remains a significant thing outside the borders of France, and one can call it a certain politics of the lady.

— Museum der eleganten Welt (1836).¹

Here is something for our girls to reflect upon. They are the ones who must bring about a reform, and cause Queen Fashion to step down from her throne, and give it up to a more worthy ruler, who shall preside over future generations of men more honorably.

— The Myrtle (1852).²