Black Patriotic Fashion in Central Europe: Warsaw, 1861–1866

Abstract

This article focuses on fashion as a tool of research and reflection of social, cultural and political processes and of various transnational influences in a nineteenth century Euro-pean city. It highlights the way in which the Polish “People’s Mourning” fashion or “Black Fashion” turned into a female tool of protest against the Russian governmentbefore and after the Polish January Uprising 1863–1864. It also traces in what mean the creation of certain visual images of the self can reflect not only the daily life of female patriot inhabit-ants of Warsaw, but rather the process of transformation oflocal and international political and social ideals into material culture (i.e. attire and accessories). The article focuses both on the visual importance of the items which were related to the mourning fashion, and on the martyrological and eschatological messages, imprinted in the patriotic female mourn-ing attire in the second half of the nineteenth century. Finally, I analyze the political role of this sartorial phenomenon, its philosophical and ideological message both on the personal and public levelas well as its transnational connections.

Keywords

• fashion
• mourning
• nationalism
• january uprising
• gender