ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Habit as clothing: Transforming the body between psychology and consumerism, 1870s-1910s

• In Event: The Science and Medicine of Habits II: Habits, The Body and Health

English Abstract

The word “habit,” which arrived in English through Old French, originally referred to dress. In modern French, this is still the case: “un habit” means a garment. In the mid-19th century, the French psychologist Léon Dumont united the French and English meanings of “habit” by stating that clothing bore the trace of an individual’s habits. This paper explores the relationship between habit, clothing and concepts of individuality between the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.

From the 1870s, French psychologists theorised about individual character or “personality,” which they often defined as the sum of acquired habits. At the same time, scholars and lay consumers alike began to imagine that an individual’s character or personality was expressed through the garments one chose to wear: “acquired habits” could also refer, literally, to purchased clothes.

The possibility to acquire an original personality through consumer choices gave space to attempts to shape oneself beyond cultural and ethnical limitations. Ginette, the fictional protagonist of a French short story from 1917, tried to “become Japanese” by buying Japan-inspired goods and clothing. She ended up with such a “strong habit,” the author of the story wrote, that even an upheaval such as the First World War did not break her Japanese-ness. The case study of Ginette highlights that habit, enabled by consumer choices, could transform people’s bodies and identities, but this transformation was not neutral. This paper weaves early 20th-century imperial and racial politics into the history of habit and individuality.

Author

• Chiara Lacroix, European University Institute