Fashion, Work, and Politics in Modern France (PDF)

STEVE ZDATNY is Associate Professor of History at West Virginia University, USA. He is the editor of Hairstyles and Fashion: A Hairdresser's History of Paris, 1910-1920 (Berg, 1999) and the author of The Politics of Survival: Artisans in Twentieth-Century France (Oxford University Press, 1990).

"Focusing on the history of the hairdressing profession since the end of the 19th century, Zdatny provides a fascinating glimpse into the ways in which the worlds of fashion and consumer taste became democratized in the modern period. He also provides a trenchant analysis of the ways in which this largely artisanal profession transformed itself as French society became increasingly competitive and market driven. Finally, this book awakens us to the manifold ways in which the most mundane aspects of everyday life - including routine hygienic practices and hairstyles - have been shaped by the caldron of history. Written with great wit and panache, Zdatny's book constitutes an indispensable contribution to French labor history, as well as the increasingly rich body of literature on taste and fashion in modern Europe." - Vicki Caron, Thomas and Diann Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies, Cornell University

"Zdatny has created a meticulously researched, in-depth analysis of French coiffure as social practice, political process, material culture, and site for both gender and technological change. Written with verve, this study presents a rare and enlightening portrait of petty commerce in peace and war, a distinctive configuration of worker-employer relations, and a demand-driven service sector whose transformations were entwined with cultural shifts. In exploring a century of coiffure, where 'one person's hairstyle was another's business and still another's labor,' Zdatny offers an essential complement to the growing literature on couture, providing a model for thoroughly contextualized histories of fashion." - Philip Scranton, History of Industry and Technology, Rutgers University

"This marvelous journey into barbershops, beauty salons, and the hairdressing profession provides an arresting new look at the history of France from the belle époque to the postwar world of Brigitte Bardot. Zdatny writes with verve and wit. He integrates the history of