Recently rediscovered at The Morgan Library, fashion plates from the Journal Des Dames et Des Modes, taught all Europeans how to look, read, and entertain themselves as modern individuals. Dating from 1797-1804, they represent the most radical changes in all of clothing history. This revolution in consumer culture signals the birth of fashion as we know it and transformed conceptions of identity, gender, and power. Their revolutionary representations of fashion generates cult followings within both academic and hobbyist circles; among whom are art historians, antiquarian bibliophiles, and historical fashionistas.
Ten graduate students—whose diverse institutional affiliations range from Columbia University, NYU, and The Bard Graduate Center—collaborated under the direction of Professors Anne Higonnet and Alex Gil to accomplish an unprecedented digital archive and scholarly online resource. The course, “Style Revolution,” was a hybrid between traditional Art History seminar and an innovative Digital Humanities seminar. Students enrolled in the course had had no prior knowledge of coding in any of the languages used (HTML, CSS, Markdown, Bash, YAML, etc) nor familiarity with any of the additional software tools that were employed to create our final site. A wide range of literacies were taught, practiced, shared and acquired, from multiple lenses and disciplines, through multi-directional pedagogy, where all became teachers for one another at some point. The end product of this collaboration with The Morgan Library and Museum is the Style Revolution website (stylerevolution.github.io) and an accompanying Instagram (instagram.com/style_revolution_journal/) which serve as an interactive extension to The Morgan’s collection of Journal des Dames et des Modes fashion plates.