Fashion in Late Ottoman Istanbul

Nancy Micklewright writes primarily about the history of photography and fashion history in the Ottoman Empire with a focus on gender. She was most recently a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow in Istanbul, working on a new project, Dressing the Republic: Women and Fashion in 1920s Türkiye. Previously she has received research fellowships from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Pasold Research Fund and the American Research Institute in Turkey. She is the former Head of Public and Scholarly Engagement for the Freer and Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art., US.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgements1. Setting the StageDecentering Fashion HistoryFashionPhotographyWho lived in Ottoman IstanbulIstanbul as a global cityEnslavement and the harem What’s in, what’s notThe book’s structure 2. Picturing Fashion and Understanding Dress: The SourcesVisual Sources: Painting and book illustrationVisual Sources: Photography Written SourcesThe Garments: Museum Collections of Ottoman women’s dress 3. The Garments: Tailoring, Construction and Transformation Elite women’s dress in 18th century Istanbul: Tailoring and constructionElite women’s dress in 18th century Istanbul: the textiles and the garmentsDress in the first decades of the 19th century Transformations 4. Acceleration of Change: The dress, the photograph and Ottoman weddingsWorking with historic photographs: the bindalli exampleThe Bindalli dress and changes over time Bindalli embroideryThe white wedding dressWedding photographyOttoman weddings: Who wore what5. The Fashion Economy in IstanbulHanimefendi: the Ottoman consumerInteraction with European womenOttoman women among themselvesFashion MediaNew clothes and shopping6. The Tastemakers Who’s who: Understanding the cast of charactersFehime SultanThe OccasionsPalace Wardrobes7. The Elusive Fashion Stories of Enslaved Women and Domestic ServantsEnslaved women and their clothing The Visual EvidenceThe textsThe Garments8. Dressing for WorkEducation and Work for Women in late Ottoman Istanbul Looking for the dress of Ottoman women at workOttoman working womenDressing for the streetAfterword: The Afterlife of Ottoman DressDress in the first decade of the Turkish RepublicThe bindalli dress as folk costume and laterFashion tastemakers, the 21st century versionThe Magnificent Century and 21st century wedding dressesBibliographyIndex

Exploring both object and image, this is a book that shines the spotlight onto communities of women so often neglected in traditional histories. The identity through dress of women in Ottoman Istanbul is explored beautifully and deftly by Nancy Micklewright, examining their lives through the clothes they chose to wear.