Katy Conover

Title of dissertation: Fashion in Conflict: World War I, Haute Couture, and the Fashionable Body


Fashion, when worn, affects the silhouette of the body and influences its ideal shape. The body then becomes the object upon which fashion resides and that body was subject to contradictory messages during World War I depending upon whether that body was illustrated, photographed or represented through physical garments. When these three types of sources came into contact with the ‘war’ body, the different manifestations of the fashionable body became part of a larger tension between a public and private persona. In analysing this source-dependent tension, the fashionable body during the war does not reveal a ‘typical’ version of that body. The influence the public and private personas had on the fashionable body creates a dynamic interplay between the war and the shifting silhouette.