In Peter McNeil’s piece “Mocking the macaroni: fashion victims of 18th-century England” and Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello’s text “The art and science of walking: gender, space, and the fashionable body in the long eighteenth century,” there is a discussion of fashion that revolves around adornment as a practice that produces and forms national identity. This conversation specifically centers the exchanges between France and England during the long eighteenth century. Both articles address the evolution of men’s fashion, the resulting division between how aristocratic men and women dress, and how this influences how gender identity is constructed. While “Mocking the macaroni” offers more insight into the reception of the macaroni trend and how it was adopted, resented, consumed by and made accessible to people over time, “The art and science of walking” offers readers insight into and contextualizes how environment, culture, health, and gender both construct and are constructed by fashion (McNeil and Riello 2). I enjoyed using these two pieces to think through my own project, specifically the relationship between fashion and manufactured spaces and how that relationship affects mobility. I am also invested in how both texts speak about silk (as an oriental material), and how changing ideas of hygiene influenced a shift away from certain textiles (like silk). The disposability of silk is also of interest to me, as there are several accounts of people throwing silk away within both texts, and what this implies for perceptions toward the East and the Asian subject. These pieces continue to shape my growing knowledge and understanding of Fashion Studies literature, thinking through these texts alongside Ellen Sampson’s projects reveals the multiple entry points into thinking and theorizing about the body through its reciprocal (though hierarchical) relationship with (and to) clothing.

Writing Prompts
“The art and science of walking: gender, space, and the fashionable body in the long eighteenth century”
“This article will focus on English dress…” (McNeil and Riello 1)
“By focusing on France and Britain, this article develops two…” (McNeil and Riello 2)
“By the early nineteenth century Paris…” (McNeil and Riello 2)
“The complexity of such historical discourse regarding the relationship between the body and fashion…” (McNeil and Riello 7)
“The physicality of the body, the action of walking…” (McNeil and Riello 8)
“Mocking the macaroni: fashion victims of 18th-Century:
“Derived from contemporary French and Italian fashion…” (McNeil 1)
“Interest in elaborate clothing would have been further…” (McNeil 2)
“By virtue of their flamboyant dress and behavior…” (McNeil 2)
“The late 18th Century was a time of rapid transformation…” (McNeil 2)
“The notion of moderation was thus embraced as …” (McNeil 3)

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