Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion

Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion places the iconic New York figure and her writing in the context of fashion history and shows how dress lies at the very center of her thinking about art and culture. The study traces American patronage of the Paris couture houses from Worth and Doucet through Poiret and Chanel and places Wharton's characters in these establishments and garments to offer fresh readings of her well-known novels. Less known are Wharton's knowledge of and involvement in the craft of garment making in her tales of seamstresses, milliners, and textile workers, as well as in her creation of workshops in Paris during the First World War to employ Belgian and French seamstresses and promote the value of handmade garments in a world given to machine-driven uniformity of design and labor. Pointing the way toward further research and inquiry, Katherine Joslin has produced a truly interdisciplinary work that combines the best of literary criticism with an infectious love and appreciation of material culture.

The origins of the modern fashion industry as seen through the works of Edith Wharton

"A unique, interdisciplinary study, Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion offers a strong argument for further integration of literary and material culture studies, and will appeal to historians of various disciplines and Wharton aficionados alike."--The Magazine Antiques

"There's never been a book quite like Katherine Joslin's Edith Wharton and the Making of Fashion, a very readable tour de force which blends material culture and literary study in a refreshingly entertaining and informative way."--Susan Goodman, H. Fletcher Brown Chair of Humanities, University of Delaware