Dr Peter K McNeil
Peter is a design historian whose doctoral work studied the English macaroni. Other research interests include dance and club cultures, and the relationship of fashion to art and interior design. He is currently an Australia Research Council recipient for a comparative study of 18th-century English and French masculine dress. His most recent publication is a chapter on European dress for the Routledge World Series: Enlightenment.
Masculine Dress and Social Identity of the Petit-Maître in 18th-century Paris
In 18th-century French culture the petit-maître (little master) functioned as a significant icon of the foppish male in a vast array of visual and literary sources. These range across genres and social orders from high art to the caricature (artists include G. de St-Aubin and P-L. Debucourt), and written sources including philosophy (Rousseau), satire and reportage (de Carracioli, Mercier, Thiery), science and medicine (Vandermonde). The petit-maître was the focus of a substantial body of French discourse which criticised aristocratic indolence and modishness, warning against an emasculated French manhood and state. Such men, the philosophes claimed, deferred to women not only in matters of dress and deportment, but in statecraft. The relationship of the figure to new urban spaces and shopping culture of Enlightenment Paris also made moralists anxious. While 'fictional' and satirical representations of these figures will be analysed, prominent individuals such as the comte d'Artois will be included.
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