A modern(ist) mode: fashion, 1910, and the limits of modernism

Since the British Association of Modernist Studies conference in Glasgow, December 2010, which considered Virginia Woolf’s famous assertion that “on or about December 1910, human character changed”, there has been a resurgence of interest in modernism’s origins. Developed from a paper given at this conference, this article interrogates the modernist construction of chronological limits, examining why such limits were imposed. Engaging with Woolf’s statement, it considers her claims from a hitherto unexplored angle – from the perspective of modern fashion. Focusing on the 1910/1911 season, and Paul Poiret’s revolutionary catalogue illustrated by Georges Lepape, it asks firstly whether Woolf’s claims can be substantiated, and secondly, and more importantly, whether limits themselves are a critically useful way of ordering and interpreting the past.