Often anachronistically called the ‘S-bend,’ the dramatic straight-front corset of the early 1900s was invented by a doctor for health purposes and quickly swept up into the tides of fashion.
Read More
Beetle-wing embroidery: a colonialist fantasia and exotic fad in nineteenth-century England and...
Read More
In a late 18th-century painting organized by skin tone, Agostino Brunias has depicted a range of colonial Dominican fashions from the wealthy elite to the poorest people whom they enslaved.
Read More
This 18th-century painting commemorates an historic fencing match between two French knights: one an illegitimate Black nobleman and the other a gender nonconforming spy.
Read More
This important painting of a Black Haitian deputy, once enslaved, commemorates his participation in the assembly that abolished slavery in France in 1794. He wears the tricolored uniform of a deputy of the French National Convention and only his gold earring speaks to his Colonial ties.
Read More
This dignified portrait by Diego Velázquez depicts his enslaved Black assistant, Juan de Pareja, who was a skilled artist in his own right.
Read More
This 18th-century grand manner portrait of two cousins juxtaposes fashionable turquerie with luxurious but conventional children’s clothing.
Read More
Guipure lace is a type of continuous bobbin lace made without a mesh ground; its motifs are connected by bridges or plaits.
Read More
This painting of two 18th-century gentlewomen features fashionable trends in portraiture and clothing, including Orientalism, pastoralism, and masculine-inspired dress.
Read More
The Fez and the Ottoman Path to Modernity
1869 – Red Silk Dress
katazome (stencil printing)
1905 – André Derain, Lucien Gilbert
Inès Gâches-Sarraute and the Straight-Front Corset