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Welcome to Dressed, The History of Fashion, a podcast where we explore the who what when of why we wear we are

fashion historians and your hosts Cassidy Zachary and April Callahan.

Cass if I may I would like to start our episode today with a quote which is something

that we don't do typically but I thought this passage was so lovely and perfect for our topic today that it's kind of like a

must we simply must and this quote is from the late 19th century French writer Octave Usain, who had quite a

penchant for fashion history, I might say.

I mean, he wrote a ton of books, a ton of books.

At least five of his very numerous books have been given over to

fashion, particularly women's fashion and an article of which, women's fashion,

he described as such in his very first book, which is published in 1882 as, quote,

is any toy more coquettish, any plaything so charming, any ornament more expressive in the hands of a queen or spirit like yourself.

When you handle it in the coquetries of your intimate receptions,

it becomes the interpreter of your hidden sentiments,

the magic wand of fairy surprises,

the defensive armor against amorous enterprise,

the screen of sudden bashfulness, and a word the scepter of your perplexing beauty.

That is quite lovely and he is of course speaking about the myriad of ways women of the past used fans as not only practical instruments

for cooling and dainty fashion accessories to complete an ensemble, but most importantly

for our purposes today, when we're talking about when women used it as a means of non-verbal communication and we are thrilled to have fashion historian Laura Camarlingo join us today to speak about the language of

fans. And Laura is the assistant curator of costume and textile arts at the De

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