Louvre curitibano

gender, fashion comsuption and female sociability in the modernized city

Abstract

The movement of people in modernized cities in the second half of the 19th century was marked by gender issues, and also class. For example, walking freely through urban spaces was a male gender privilege, while bourgeois women were subject to restrictions at the risk of being defamed. However, consumption practices proved to be a way to expand female access and presence in cities from the creation of department stores that associated consumption and leisure. In this article I intend to show how such events forged feminine practices of consumption and sociability at that time and in the decades to come. To do this, I will analyze advertisements from the Louvre fabric store, from the 1930s and 1940s in Curitiba, Brazil. In order to do that, I will observe evidence of shared meanings between sales practices, consumption and sociability practices in the Louvre and department stores in London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. In this way, I intend to reflect on how bourgeois women knew how to use consumption, specifically fashion consumption, to circulate through cities legitimately and explain how Louvre worked as a mediator between women and public spaces.