Progress, deception, temptation, practicality. Fashion in French Enlightenment thought

The article is devoted to the study of Enlightenment thinkers discourse about fashion. In the XVIII century, Paris finally established itself as a fashion capital on the European map. The weight of fashion in the public consciousness also increased: the first works on the history of fashion appeared, magazines and newspapers wrote about it, authors dedicated essays, plays and novels to it. Fashion was also not ignored by those whose thought had a huge impact on the society of that time — the French Enlightenment thinkers. Analyzing the works of the Enlightenment thinkers, the author reconstructs their discourse about fashion and shows what issues it raised. Two directions of thought about fashion are defined: supporters of luxury and its opponents, their views are reviewed separately. To analyze it the author uses the methodology of cultural history and methods of studying fiction literature as a historical source. The author comes to the conclusion that one can consider the XVIII century dispute about luxury as a watershed between Enlightenment thinkers in their attitude to fashion. Those of them who supported luxury and considered it an impetus for development of the country's economy favored fashion justifying its economic expediency for the state. Others, opponents of luxury, did not approve fashion and sought to show its harmful effect on a man and society. The author shows how the opponents of luxury formed in their works a whole system of ideas about fashion and costume, which then became part of the ideological doctrine of the future sartorial revolution. The article contributes to the study of the history of French fashion of the XVIII century and may be of interest to a wide range of readers interested in the history of fashion and the Age of Enlightenment in France.

France, fashion, fashion history, Enlightenment, Denis Diderot, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Louis Sébastien Mercier, Charles Louis Montesquieu, Claude Adrian Helvetius, Voltaire