Jews in Suits: Men's Dress in Vienna, 1890-1938

By Jonathan C. Kaplan-Wajselbaum

Book Overview

Shortlisted for the Leslie and Sophie Caplan Award for Jewish Non-Fiction

Surviving photographs of Jewish Viennese men during the fin-de-si cle and interwar periods - both the renowned cultural luminaries and their many anonymous coreligionists - all share a striking sartorial detail: the tailored suit. Yet, until now, the adoption of the tailored suit and its function in the formation of modern Jewish identities remains under-researched.

Jews in Suits uses a rich range of written and visual sources, including literary fiction and satire, 'ego-documents', photography, trade catalogues, invoices, and department store culture, to propose a new narrative of men, fashion, and their Jewish identities. It reveals that dressing in a modern manner was not simply a matter of assimilation, but rather a way of developing new models of Jewish subjectivity beyond the externally prescribed notion of 'the Jew'. Drawing upon fashionable dress, folk costume, religious dress, avant-garde, oppositional dress, typologies which are often considered separate from one another, it proposes a new way of reading men and clothing cultures within an iconic cultural milieu, offering insights into the relationship of clothing and grooming to the understanding of the self.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 135024421X
• ISBN13: 9781350244214
• Release Date: December 2024
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"