Fashion, Commercial Culture and the Femme Fatale

Abstract

Late in the nineteenth century in France, a peculiar combination of circumstances resulted in the visual manifestation of the dangerous woman dubbed the Femme Fatale. Usually associated with the period of the Belle Epoque (1890’s), the Femme Fatale emerged from such symbolist literary sources as Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil.1 An important new subject in symbolist art of the period, the visualization of feminine evil was part and parcel of a much larger cultural context which included a mass-produced consumer culture, continued interest in Japanese paraphernalia, a burgeoning high-fashion industry and changes in the private and public relationships between the sexes. It is through the examination of this larger context that the Femme Fatale can come to be understood as a volatile mixture of fashion and the feminine body; the icon embodies both an advertisement of sensuality and a warning against indulgence in physical pleasure. Perhaps most of all, the figure serves as a visual manifestation of conflicting masculine impulses towards women in general and the then-burgeoning women’s rights movement in particular.