Description: Credit, Fashion, Sex is a historical account of how, in Old Regime France, credit was both a central part of economic exchange and a crucial concept for explaining dynamics of influence and power in all spheres of life.
Review Quotes: "If you want to understand how things really worked in the world of French Queen Marie Antoinette, then read this book. Behind the glitter and the glowing beauty stood the fashion designer who provided style and most important, credit, for the rich rarely settled their debts. With this masterful and fascinating study, Clare Haru Crowston lays bare a whole cultural system in which economics, fashion, marriage, and social distinction were intertwined in brilliant and ultimately fatal ways."--Lynn Hunt, author of Inventing Human Rights: A History