{"title":"Embroidered Hierarchies: French Civil Uniforms and the <i>décret du 29 messidor</i> in Napoleonic Paris and Milan","authors":"Brontë Hebdon","doi":"10.3366/cost.2023.0263","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In the days following Napoleon Bonaparte's nomination as Emperor of the French in May 1804, two decrees were introduced to French society: the décret du 24 messidor an XII and the décret du 29 messidor an XII. The first organized the French court into a hierarchy of privilege, placing Napoleon and his closest friends and advisors at the top of a complex pyramid of social capital. The second decree reoriented the court away from the sartorial egalitarianism of the French Revolution by legislating court costumes of varying colours and embroidery designs to correspond with each newly created governmental and courtly rank. Many histories of this period connect Napoleon's court costumes to his desire to strengthen the French silk industry, but less is understood about how Napoleon used these court costumes at his courts outside of France as organizational and imperialistic tools of social control. This article will consider how the décret du 24 messidor and the décret du 29 messidor were implemented in Paris and in the Kingdom of Italy in Milan in 1805, revealing that even as Napoleon's government attempted to structure French courtly society through codes of sartorial display, personal expression for men was still possible, especially through embroidery.","PeriodicalId":51969,"journal":{"name":"Costume-The Journal of the Costume Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Costume-The Journal of the Costume Society","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3366/cost.2023.0263","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In the days following Napoleon Bonaparte's nomination as Emperor of the French in May 1804, two decrees were introduced to French society: the décret du 24 messidor an XII and the décret du 29 messidor an XII. The first organized the French court into a hierarchy of privilege, placing Napoleon and his closest friends and advisors at the top of a complex pyramid of social capital. The second decree reoriented the court away from the sartorial egalitarianism of the French Revolution by legislating court costumes of varying colours and embroidery designs to correspond with each newly created governmental and courtly rank. Many histories of this period connect Napoleon's court costumes to his desire to strengthen the French silk industry, but less is understood about how Napoleon used these court costumes at his courts outside of France as organizational and imperialistic tools of social control. This article will consider how the décret du 24 messidor and the décret du 29 messidor were implemented in Paris and in the Kingdom of Italy in Milan in 1805, revealing that even as Napoleon's government attempted to structure French courtly society through codes of sartorial display, personal expression for men was still possible, especially through embroidery.
在拿破仑·波拿巴于1804年5月被提名为法国皇帝之后的日子里,法国社会颁布了两项法令:第24号信使十二号法令和第29号信使十二号法令。第一种是将法国宫廷组织成特权等级制度,将拿破仑和他最亲密的朋友和顾问置于复杂的社会资本金字塔的顶端。第二项法令通过立法规定不同颜色的宫廷服装和刺绣设计以适应每一个新成立的政府和宫廷等级,使宫廷从法国大革命的服装平等主义中重新定位。这一时期的许多历史都将拿破仑的宫廷服装与他加强法国丝绸工业的愿望联系起来,但对于拿破仑如何在法国以外的宫廷中使用这些宫廷服装作为组织和帝国主义的社会控制工具,人们知之甚少。这篇文章将考虑如何在巴黎和1805年在米兰的意大利王国实施dassacret du 24 messsidor和dassacret du 29 messsidor,揭示即使拿破仑政府试图通过服装展示规范来构建法国宫廷社会,个人表达对于男人来说仍然是可能的,特别是通过刺绣。
期刊介绍:
Costume is the journal of the Costume Society. It is a scholarly, refereed, academic publication presenting current research into historic and contemporary dress. The journal publishes articles primarily object-based, from a broad chronological period and with a worldwide remit. Costume maintains a balance between practice and theory and concentrates on the social significance of dress. Articles are welcomed from established researchers and those new to the field. The articles published in Costume are sent out for peer-review to ensure that they are of a high standard and make a contribution to dress history.