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Migrating Motifs and Productive Instabilities: Images of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century Swedish Print Culture

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 82; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00233609.2013.822927

1651-2294

Patrik Steorn,

Visual Culture and Art Theory

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size SummaryDuring the latter part of the eighteenth century, fashion plates and caricatures were published in daily papers, sold as collectors’ items, sent by mail, and copied in various media. These prints circulated widely in the European sphere and contributed to establishing a continental type of fashion culture in Sweden. Against a background of the cultural dynamics of migrations of images, this text sketches a theory of the unstable status of printed matter, and investigates what happened when European fashion imagery entered Sweden, and exploring how interpretive acts on behalf of local editors of adapting imported images were productive for establishing a Swedish print culture around fashion in the eighteenth century. Examples are mainly drawn from the Swedish daily press of the 1770s, a period when only a few of the edited publications actually included illustrations. The author argues for theorizing a performative perspective on the transnational importation and cultural appropriation of fashion imagery and caricatures, an approach that points to mistranslations and unintended uses as culturally productive acts of reception and appropriation. It is concluded that the fashion images that were imported into Sweden in the eighteenth century did not only spread knowledge of European dress and hairstyles. As they moved across geographical boundaries, they gave rise to humorous reinterpretations and piracy, and allowed for an ideologically based skepticism about the growing importance of fashion to be spread.