Mallarmé on Fashion

In the later months of 1874, the great French poet, Stéphane Mallarmé, undertook a highly idiosyncratic project - the publication of a fashion magazine (La Dernière Mode) that he almost single-handedly wrote and edited. Using a variety of femenine and masculine pseudonyms to theorize about the concept og fashoin and to report and advise on women´s clothing, popular vacation destinations, home furnishings and entertainment. Mallarmé created a spectacularly original work, which explores the nature of fashion from the inside. It is a genuine fashion magazine aspiring to lead fashion, though at the sam time, by ingenious and appealing ironies, subtly satirizing this whole genre of writing.

Complete with the original artwork and contextualising introduction and commentary, Furbank and Cains´s definitive translation of one of French literature´s greatest puzzles and surprises represents a major contribution to students, critics, theoreticians, and intellectual historians alike.