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SUMMARY:Fashion in bloom: exploring the presence of artificial flowers in 
 the credit records of an 18th-century French fashion merchant - Zara Keste
 rton (Faculty of History)
DTSTART:20240205T130000Z
DTEND:20240205T140000Z
UID:TALK210697@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tom Banbury
DESCRIPTION:In recent decades\, historians have acknowledged the role that
  women played in shaping and disseminating scientific knowledge during the
  Enlightenment. Current scholarship also suggests that fashion was a means
  through which haptic\, economic\, and practical knowledge was shared amon
 g women. This paper focuses on one particular fashion accessory – the ar
 tificial flower – to explore its contribution to our understanding of wo
 men's knowledge of botany in 18th-century France. An analysis of the recei
 pts preserved in the credit records of France's most famous fashion mercha
 nt\, Marie-Jeanne [Rose] Bertin (1747–1813)\, demonstrates high levels o
 f specificity in the flowers that women chose to adorn their outfits. Seve
 nty-five different types of flowers are mentioned using their vernacular n
 ames\, suggesting that knowledge about a wide variety of flowers was excha
 nged between fashion merchants and their clients during conversations abou
 t clothing. This paper therefore casts the fashion merchant's shop as a si
 te of botanical knowledge generation and exchange.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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