The Strategies of Distinction for Women’s Hairdressers in Ancien régime France

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• Department of History

The professionalization of coiffeurs de dames in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France ran parallel to the development of fashion in hairdresses, which took on a new degree of complexity and an accelerated frequency of renewal. Being part of the barbers and wigmakers corporation, professional women’s hairdressers sought to distinguish their practice both from the male-oriented trade and from maids, who dressed their mistresses’ hair as part of their duties. This paper will focus on the different strategies of distinction deployed by this new trade, ranging from aesthetical discussions concerning their practice, to legal procedures, and marketing campaigns in periodicals. These strategies of distinction are exemplary of the tensions at work within the highly regulated landscape of the French Ancien régime guild system, but also of an emerging taste for novelties which affected all levels of society.

This lecture is within the framework of the HEC Department Colloquium lecture series.

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Attachments:

• 2019 March - Privacy Statement for HEC Events.pdf