Pretty Gentlemen. Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World

Jennifer Milam

doi:10.1080/14434318.2022.2143764

Milam, Jennifer

2022-07-03 00:00:00

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 2022, vol. 22, no. 2, 230–233 https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2022.2143764 REVIEW Pretty Gentlemen. Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World, by Peter McNeil, London: Yale University Press, 2018, 255 pages, $72.95, hardback. Most people have heard the term macaroni through the ditty “Yankee Doodle”, but few, even within art history and fashion studies, know of the extensive visual and textual materials related to the ‘macaroni men’ in eighteenth-century culture. In his global research into all things macaroni, Peter McNeil has pulled together a rich history of this cosmopolitan presentation of the (male) self to resurrect the macaroni men, questioning what their fashion sense enabled and exploring alter- native conceptions of masculinity. The first book-length study devoted to this male fashion figure of the 1760s and 1770s, it starts off with a series of questions related to the meaning of clothing, the swiftness of changes in fashion, and the classical framework through which young men of the eighteenth century engaged in fashionable luxuries that improved their appearance. With over 150 illustrations, mostly of objects rarely seen and little known, the reader is introduced to a visually rich history of the macaroni. McNeil’s painstaking research over many

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Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Taylor & Francis

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