Middle Eastern and North African Jews and the Birth of Modern Fashion: A Hidden History
In this talk, historians Devi Mays and Julia Phillips Cohen discuss the unknown role that Jews from the eastern and southern Mediterranean played in the shaping of modern couture. Following two fashion houses run by an interconnected network of North African and Middle Eastern Jews in fin-de-siècle Paris, the talk reveals the participation of these firms in a global web of makers, suppliers, and designers stretching from Algiers and Constantinople to Cairo, Tabriz and Kyoto. Julia Phillips Cohen is an Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her publications include the books Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial...