This book, the English translation of La Culture des Apparences by Daniel Roche, is a study of dress in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Roche discusses general approaches to the history of dress, locates the subject within current French historiography and uses a large sample of inventories to explore the differences between the various social classes in the amount they spent on clothes and the kind of cloths they wore.

List of plates; List of tables; Part I. History of Clothing: 1. Clothing or costume? 2. The Quicherat effect and after; 3. History, fashion and clothing systems from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries; Part II. The Economy of Wardrobes: 4. Towards an understanding of the Parisian clothing system; 5. The hierarchy of appearances in Paris from Louis XIV to Louis XVI; 6. The contents of wardrobes from the classical age to the Revolution; 7. The invention of linen; 8. The triumph of appearances: nobilities and clothes; 9. The discipline of appearances: the prestige of uniform; Part III. Producing, Selling and Stealing: the Distribution of Appearances: 10. From crafts to customers: the Parisian clothing economy; 11. From crafts to customers: tailors, dressmakers, linen-drapers and fashion merchants; 12. From theft to resale: another aspect of the clothes trade; 13. Caring for clothes: from propriety to cleanliness; Part IV. Truth and the Mask: 14. Clothes in the novel; 15. Rational and healthy clothes; 16. Fashions in reason and reasons for fashion: the birth of the fashion press in France; Conclusion: The culture of appearances: consumption and morality; Index.