Liberté, Égalité, Bien Habillée : Feminine socio-cultural norms from a fashion magazine in the context of the French Directoire, 1797–99

Abstract: The Journal des Dames et des Modes started its publication in 1797 and was de facto the only popular and lasting fashion magazine aimed towards women since the fall of its predecessor, even prior to 1789. This study argues that this fashion magazine both reflected and constituted the mindset of the new regime’s elite. The French Directoire (1795-1799) was a short-lived but intense regime characterised by its transformative nature and excesses to redefine society’s order and limits. The Journal, although trivial in aspect, participated in this effort by moralising a frivolous part of the female population through the entertainment it proposed, making it a fun yet pedagogical tool in the hands of the dominating bourgeois mindset. The periodical spread socio-cultural norms that were in accordance with the regime’s main concern – public good. And although not active per se in politics, women had their role to play as far as public utility was concerned, that of the civic mother – their designated form of citizenship. However, the readers of the Journal were more engaged in the mundane and cultural world, which demonstrated high permeability and reciprocity with politics. So, while women typically embodied the private sphere and personal concerns, contrary to men who represented the public sphere and public good, the women of the Directoire were the first ones to set the tendency of blurring lines between individual and common concerns – an ambivalent stance which is aligned with the transformative aspect of the regime.