De l’industrie de la confection au musée de la Chemiserie et de l’Élégance masculine d’Argenton-sur-Creuse (Indre)

Abstract

The Musée de la Chemiserie et de l’Élégance masculine was founded by a former businessman, Jean-René Gravereaux, in order to safeguard and transmit a heritage bearing witness to an industrial activity founded during the 19th century, the manufacture of men’s shirts. The museum was opened in 1993 and is located in the earliest mechanical lingerie workshop, set up by Charles Brillaud in about 1860. On the second floor of this former factory, beneath its north-lit roofs, a shirt-making workshop has been reconstituted. It displays the main manufacturing stages, reproducing the noise of the sewing machines and other pieces of equipment and showing the discomfort of the working conditions. Accounts recorded by former women workers at the factory, along with archival materials and old photographs bring the workshop and its machines, now inert, back to life. The interest in the lives and work of these shirt makers (women) leads on to the history of this garment itself, its evolution, its social role and its symbolism. And it places this piece of clothing in a broader context, that of the evolution of men’s fashion as a whole.

Keywords

• heritage
• museum
• textile industry
• memory
• fashion
• clothing manufacturing / garment manufacturing