Fashion, Plastic and Myths in Color

Abstract

This short article examines a photograph in a 1956 catalogue for the French department store Galeries Lafayette in the context of the country’s postwar modernization, Paris renovations and the development of the readymade garment industry. It relates the production of image to the construction and dissemination of fashion and femininity in the print media. In particular, it notes how the use of changing technologies in image production, notably Kodachrome color film, shaped and exposed these constructions. Drawing on the notion of myth, as formulated by Roland Barthes, this article asks how the image spoke to modernity’s inherent contradictions, notably between old and new, in its depiction of bodies, plastic and synthetic fabric. Finally, it shows why this was particularly relevant in the culture of postwar France.