Clare Haru Crowston, associate professor, history, University of Illinois

Old Regime France is framed by time—its very designation is a result of the revolution that first identified it by destroying it. Crowston addresses the Old Regime through the dual lenses of fashion and credit: contrasting the ever-faster pace of 1770s and ‘80s fashion with the halting rhythms of credit used to pay for fashionable clothing and accessories. The staccato tempo of changing fashion and extended credit wedded working people to their elite patrons, setting them at odds, providing new insight into material culture, value, and inequality in the last decades of the Old Regime.

This is a private event for Textile & Costume Society participants.

RSVP: Friends-Textile@mfa.org