Fashion and textile scholar, Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, discusses the sophisticated fashion industry during the reign of Louis XVI.

Chrisman-Campbell's engrossing book chronicles one of the most exciting, controversial, and extravagant periods in the history of fashion: the reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in 18th-century France. She offers a carefully researched glimpse into the turbulent era's sophisticated and largely female-dominated fashion industry, which produced courtly finery as well as promoted a thriving secondhand clothing market outside the royal circle. Chrisman-Campbell will discuss the exceptionally imaginative and uninhibited styles of the period immediately before the French Revolution and also explore fashion's surprising influence on the course of the Revolution itself. The absorbing narrative demonstrates fashion's crucial role as a visible and versatile medium for social commentary, and shows the glittering surface of 18th-century high society as well as its seedy underbelly.

Book signing to follow. Chrisman-Campbell's book will be available for sale in the Museum bookstore. All luncheon attendees will be entered in a door prize drawing for a copy of Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell's book, Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.