Fashion and Politics, The Politics of Fashion: Józef Simmler’s Portrait of Emilia Włodkowska, Society Portrait and Haute Couture

Abstract

The article proposes an analytical approach tuned to 19th-century society portraiture and tests it on Józef Simmler’s Portrait of Emilia Włodkowska (1865, National Museum in Warsaw). The pictured ball gown was likely by Worth and presented as being worn in Paris rather than in Warsaw to respect the politically-motivated Polish national mourning (1861–1866), culminating during the January Uprising (1863–1864) against Russian rule, that precluded organizing and attending balls at home. The portrait was an act of public performance—and indeed it was publicly exhibited at the artist’s posthumous exhibition in Warsaw in 1868. Its staging and costuming reflected the sitter’s particular agenda fine-tuned to multifarious current contexts: she promoted her Warsaw fashion house and herself as a respectable society lady and competent agent of French fashion in the period of political turmoil and resultant expectations concerning Polish women’s dress and conduct. The portrait showcases Simmler’s juste milieu approach and illustrates a very current shift in the fashionable female silhouette, advocated by Worth, while referencing the dress and artistic tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries and drawing inspiration from the new medium of photography.