19世紀後半のイギリスにおけるミドルクラスの色彩コンプレックスとその克服法

抄録

  The British have long been ashamed of their sense of colour being significantly inferior to that of the French. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, British middle classes, whose economic powers increasingly impacted mainstream fashion, forged a series of new rules in order to overcome their inferior complex to the French. That is, instead of soiling the immorality of French fashion, British middle classes decided to use their self-avowedly superior intellectual power, diligence, enterprising as well as self-restraining dispositions in studying French taste and absorbing it. In addition, they applied their learned knowledge of colour into the branches of domestic industries such as the chemical dye industry. As the industries actually flourished toward the end of the nineteenth century, middle-class choice of colour in dress such as aniline dyed fabrics became associated with Englishness, presenting the most advanced industrial country in the world. By doing so, the middle classes became confident in their own sense of colour. To trace this process, the author uses popular fashion magazines, etiquette books, and theories of colour widely available on the market, all of whose core audience was the middle classes.