Fashion body. A social history of the measurement of Human (Europe, 16th-19th century)

Abstract

From the Vitruvian Man to the S, M and L Human of the 19th century, measurement is at the center of the definition of the human body and fashions. Without measurements, no clothing: the body disappears. The challenge of this article is to propose a series of questions to understand the participation of body practitioners - from the tailor to the wigmaker - in the paradigm shifts imposing a new conception of Man and a new body. The history of the body and its capture by the practitioners allows to complete a view of the history of clothing: that of the first carnal envelope which serves as a support for clothing and the artifices of appearances. The social and political transformations of the 19th century in Europe have often been studied on the basis of norms and coercive measures. Nevertheless, I propose to renew the questioning, and in particular to examine how bodily knowledge influences the human body and nourishes reflections from the anthropometry of the Renaissance to the technological progress of the first industrialization. The manufacture of bodies is a place of excellence for understanding the dynamics of scientification that affected Western Europe for four centuries. The body is the means of expression of economic, social and political norms. At the crossroads of a social history of bodily practices, the anthropology of techniques and the epistemology of aesthetics, I propose to question a history of the measurement of Man based on the knowledge of practitioners of the body.