According to the Magasin des modes nouvelles, when a French woman wore a dress ‘à la Turque,’ she “remporte des triomphes plus sûrs & plus agréables que ceux d’une Georgienne ou Circassienne dans les Harems de Constantinople. Il n’est pas même de Sultane qui ne fût jalouse de son élégance, de sa grace, & des hommages qu’on lui rend.” Women’s superiority in dress became an argument used in editors’ nationalist discourses; editors of the French fashion press often presented ‘their’ women as more fashionable and better studied in the arts of la mode than their foreign counterparts. This practice was not unique to the French, The Fashionable Magazine similarly touted English women’s fashions as superior, dismissing French fashions as “objects of our imitation.” To the French fashion press editors, the change documented in their publications served as proof to all other nations that “leur [women’s] imagination ne se repose
According to the Magasin des modes nouvelles, when a French woman wore a dress ‘à la Turque,’ she “remporte des triomphes plus sûrs & plus agréables que ceux d’une Georgienne ou Circassienne dans les Harems de Constantinople. Il n’est pas même de Sultane qui ne fût jalouse de son élégance, de sa grace, & des hommages qu’on lui rend.” Women’s superiority in dress became an argument used in editors’ nationalist discourses; editors of the French fashion press often presented ‘their’ women as more fashionable and better studied in the arts of la mode than their foreign counterparts. This practice was not unique to the French, The Fashionable Magazine similarly touted English women’s fashions as superior, dismissing French fashions as “objects of our imitation.” To the French fashion press editors, the change documented in their publications served as proof to all other nations that “leur [women’s] imagination ne se repose