The history of fashion in France : $b or, the dress of women from the Gallo-Roman period to the present time

"The history of fashion in France : or, the dress of women from the Gallo-Roman…." by Augustin Challamel is a historical account written in the late 19th century. It charts the evolution of French women’s dress from ancient Gaul through the Middle Ages to the author’s present, treating clothing as a social and moral barometer. The work highlights Paris’s leadership in style and the roles of actresses, fashion journals, and even dressed dolls in spreading trends, and it promises a period-by-period survey from the Gallo-Roman era onward. The opening of the volume presents fashion as a serious lens on society, quoting poets, praising Frenchwomen’s taste, and placing Paris at the center of global style. It illustrates celebrity influence with Mlle. Mars’s famous yellow gown, sketches the rise of fashion media from Amman’s Gynæceum to Lamésangère’s Journal des Dames et des Modes, mentions dolls used to export styles, and lays out a plan to cover each era. The first chapters then describe Gallic and Gallo-Roman attire—woad-stained skin yielding to tunics, veils (mavors and palla), Roman stolae, perfumes and cosmetics, jewelry, specialized footwear, fans, and cooling amber or crystal balls—before moving to Merovingian and early Carlovingian fashions shaped by Frankish rule: skins and camlets, coifs and veils (including the obbou), jeweled belts, braided hair, and modesty enforced by custom and church. They profile royal women and manuscript images to detail belts, veils, colors, and cleanliness (including baths), and then trace the shift to distinctly French medieval styles: dominical veils, bliauds and garde-corps, afiche clasps and serpent-trains, surcoats and hoods, emblazoned gowns, and a growing variety of fabrics.