Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women: A Cultural Study of French Readymade Fashion, 1945-68, Alexis Romano

Prêt‑à‑Porter: Paris and Women is the first critical history of French ready-to-wear, illuminating how post‑war garments shaped modern womanhood and national identity. Drawing on an archive of garments, fashion magazines like Vogue and Elle, film, photography, and personal interviews, Alexis Romano traces the genre’s emergence between 1945 and 1968. Her nuanced narratives show how style intersected with industrial modernisation, urbanism and international diplomacy—revealing ready-to-wear as both cultural statement and post‑war design strategy.

Richly illustrated with 16 colour and 38 black-and-white images, the book explores themes from salon politics under the Fourth Republic to the expansion of women’s sartorial and urban spaces during the Sixties. Romano deftly captures how print media choreographed new modes of dressing, and how Parisian brands navigated reconstruction with conscious branding and visual storytelling. The result is a cultural map of style’s power—where clothes speak of gender, nation and modernity in equal measure.

About the Author
Alexis Romano is a dress and visual culture scholar (PhD, Courtauld Institute of Art), co‑founder of the Fashion Research Network, and Curatorial Fellow at The Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute (2020–21). Teaching at Parsons School of Design, she bridges archival depth with critical theory, animating clothes as social and political actors. Her research draws personal and national histories together, revealing fashion’s role in reconstruction and identity-making.

Publication date: 2022
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 264
ISBN: 978-1350126190