This is CBSi and the world. I'm John Bachelor continuing with Professor Anne Higonee, Art History

Barnard College. The book is Liberty Equality Fashion. The professor has done me the favor of introducing the

French Revolution. I never knew. I knew it was somewhere out there but I never

knew what it was. It has to do with fashion. Fashion during the revolution driven by the terror and the

upside downness of the world because the aristocrats and the

assume to be fixed in heaven was gone.

The clothing was gone.

The silks were gone, never cleaned in their lifetimes.

The sumptuary laws were gone, never cleaned in their lifetimes, the sumptuary laws were gone.

And instead what we had was cotton.

Therein lies the tale.

Professor Cotton from the empire, from Pundecheri. the

the trading post left in France, from Pundecheri, the trading post left in France, from India, from Cairo, from Bangladesh at that time, Well it's called Bangladesh today. All that cotton and

it was available there before but suddenly our graces discover cotton and new.

Did they have, was cotton seen right away as a revolution by them

as something to liberate us?

How was it understood by the Graces?

Cotton was a completely revolutionary fabric because the more you were aristocratic or royal before the revolution,

the more you wore silks and jewels. And all of a sudden, these three fashion celebrities proclaim that cotton is the most fashionable fabric to wear, completely white cotton,

which because cotton only grew in a tight band around the equator, was mostly imported

from India. Cotton had begun to be worn by the lower classes starting in the 17th century,

but all of a sudden during the French Revolution it became the fabric of choice.

...