About this Event
How do clothes make a man? Margaret Waller’s talk will draw on her book, Napoleon’s Closet, which explores the paradoxes of modern male power as a matter of attire in the lives of two “emperors" before and after the French Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, crowned himself emperor of the French. His equally unlikely contemporary, Pierre Joseph Antoine Leboux La Mésangère, a defrocked priest, invented the “women’s” fashion press and made it his empire. After the French Revolution, the two men helped redefine male power dressing as a matter of dressing up, dressing down, and closeting. Together, their stories illuminate how uniformity, misogyny, and homophobia shaped recognizably modern notions of normative masculinity, queerness, and “the closet.”
Margaret Waller is Professor Emerita of French at Pomona College and author of The Male Malady: Fictions of Impotence in the French Romantic Novel. Her newest book is Napoleon’s Closet: The Emperor, the Priest, and the Men Who Invented Modern Fashion (Columbia University Press).
Anne Higonnet is Barbara Novak Professor of Art History at Barnard College. Her most recent books include Liberty, Equality, Fashion; the Women Who Styled the French Revolution (Norton & Co., 2024); A Museum of One's Own; Private Collecting, Public Gift (Periscope Publishing, 2009); and Lewis Carroll (Phaidon, 2008). Most recently, she directed a website about the world’s rarest and most radical fashion plates: https://stylerevolution.github.io/.
Event Details & Important Information
This event is free and open to the public, but please note that registration does not guarantee a seat. We intentionally overbook our events, and seating is first come, first served. We recommend arriving early.
Important: Campus Access Requirements
Columbia’s campus is currently open only to Columbia-affiliated guests (with a valid CUID).
If you do not have a Columbia ID, you will need a QR code to enter campus.
Columbia Public Safety will only issue one QR code per email address. If two or more names are registered on eventbrite using the same e-mail address, only one of them will receive a unique QR code. Please use a different personal e-mail address for each guest.
To receive a QR code:
- You must register on Eventbrite at least 48 hours in advance
- We will submit your name and email to Public Safety
- You will receive an email from [email protected] with your unique QR code
Please check your spam/junk folder if you don’t see the email, and bring a valid photo ID with you to present at campus entry points.
Event venue & nearby stays
Maison Française, 515 West 116th Street, New York, United States
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