Isabelle Gillet and Courtney Wilder, both PhD candidates in History of Art, will speak about the exhibit they have curated, Divide and Clothe: Illustrating Fashion in Nineteenth Century Europe. After the talk, there will be time for questions, conversation, and browsing the exhibit. Light refreshments will be provided.

Divide and Clothe: Illustrating Fashion in Nineteenth Century Europe explores a dramatic surge in images of clothing that appeared in European books, journals, and prints from the 1780s through the 1870s. These images contributed to and reflected shifting ideas about the interrelationship between clothing and identity. The exhibition traces two contrasting ideas about clothing as fashion and as costume (as well as hybrids of the two) across visual representations ranging from fashion plates to caricatures, and from journals associated with clothing production, to encyclopedic volumes on historic dress and world costume.