Jews in Suits

<b>Shortlisted for the Leslie and Sophie Caplan Award for Jewish Non-Fiction</b><br/><br/>Surviving photographs of Jewish Viennese men during the <i>fin-de-siècle</i> and interwar periods - both the renowned cultural luminaries and their many anonymous coreligionists - all share a striking sartorial detail: the tailored suit. Yet until now the adoption of the tailored suit and its function in the formation of modern Jewish identities remains under-researched.<br/><br/><i>Jews in Suits</i>uses a rich range of written and visual sources including literary fiction and satire 'ego-documents' photography trade catalogues invoices and department store culture to propose a new narrative of men fashion and their Jewish identities. It reveals that dressing in a modern manner was not simply a matter of assimilation but rather a way of developing new models of Jewish subjectivity beyond the externally prescribed notion of 'the Jew'. Drawing upon fashionable dress folk costume religious dress avant-garde oppositional dress typologies which are often considered separate from one another it proposes a new way of reading men and clothing cultures within an iconic cultural milieu offering insights into the relationship of clothing and grooming to the understanding of the self.