The Mechanical Smile: Modernism and the First Fashion Shows in France and America, 1900-1929

A superlative study of the roots of the modern fashion show

In the early 20th century, the desire to see clothing in motion flourished on both sides of the Atlantic: models tangoed, slithered, swaggered, and undulated before customers in couture houses and department stores. The Mechanical Smile traces the history of the earliest fashion shows in France and the United States from their origins in the 1880s to 1929, situating them in the context of modernism and the rationalization of the bo...