Associate Professor and Chairperson
Justine De Young
- School of Liberal Arts
- History of Art
The Art of Parisian Chic
Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris
Using artworks by Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others, The Art of Parisian Chic explores how women and artists in Impressionist Paris (1855-1885) crafted their public images to exploit and resist stereotypes.
French societal expectations and beauty ideals shaped how women were seen and how they chose to present themselves in public – whether on the street, in a photograph, or in a portrait on the walls of the annual Paris Salon. On Paris’s broad new boulevards and in its public parks and theaters, women dressed to impress anonymous strangers as well as their friends. They even circulated aspirational photographs of themselves. Looking at a rich array of visual sources – from portraits to modern-life paintings, and from photographs to fashion plates – Justine De Young reveals how women were seen, how they aspired to be seen, and how they navigated public life in Second Empire and Belle Époque Paris.
This book considers how fashionable feminine “types” made famous in books, caricatures, and paintings created a visual lexicon and stylistic guide for women. Men and women alike relied on these types – cocotte (mistress), jeune veuve (young widow), amazone (independent equestrienne), demoiselle de magasin (shopgirl), and Parisienne (chic Parisian woman) – to judge the class, character, morality, and worth of strangers. With a rich set of illustrations from the Impressionist canon and beyond, The Art of Parisian Chic shows how modern women used fashion and these stereotypes to construct and reinvent their identities.
How did you first come up with the idea for this work?
I was interested in why artists suddenly became so interested in women and fashion. I pursued that question in my dissertation and ever since.
What was your research process like?
Well it started twenty years ago when I began my dissertation. So it’s been long! It involved many trips to libraries, archives and museums. In the past five years it’s involved a lot of digital research using newly digitized 19th c. newspapers.
How long did you work on this before it was published?
20 years.
Does this work relate to your role at FIT? If so, how?
Yes, I teach both art and fashion history at FIT, including a Honors seminar on Fashion and Impressionism.
What was your biggest challenge? What was most rewarding?
Securing image rights for 150 images was definitely the most logistically challenging. Most rewarding is finally being able to share this research with the public!
Have you published any other books or have any upcoming publications?
Fashion in European Art: Dress and Identity, Politics and the Body, 1775-1925 (Bloomsbury, 2019)
- Professor at FIT since 2015
- Book published in summer 2025