12 Fashion and Diplomacy

Vincent Dubé-Senécal and Madeleine Goubau

The relation between fashion and diplomacy is not new, as evidenced by the exchanging
of fashion dolls between the French and Piemontese royal courts in the sixteenth cen-
tury.1 Moreover, as discussed by Elizabeth Block, unions of wealthy society women with
public officials and ambassadors at the turn of the twentieth century “were perceived as
constituting acts of soft diplomacy” because these women patronized French couture
houses and thus promoted French business interests in their home country.2 Most
notably, Block explains this was the case of Frances Folsom, who, during her second
term as the U.S. First Lady from 1893 to 1897, “patronized couturière Madame Lodaux
and most likely the House of Doucet.”3 In fact, not only has it remained strong to this
day, but it could be argued that fashion and diplomacy have become ever closer, espe-
cially since the advent of the Internet and social media. For example, one can think of
many press reports of the dresses worn by the former American First Lady Michelle
Obama at state dinners: By choosing foreign designers established in the United States,
she often promoted domestic talents and industry while also giving a clever nod to the
guest country.4 The case of the inaugural Fashion Trust Arabia Prize, organized with
great fanfare in Qatar in 2019, is also diplomatic in many ways. The contest, open to all
young fashion designers from the Middle East and North Africa, appeared not only as a
clear attempt by Qatar to distinguish itself culturally from other Muslim Gulf countries
but also, above all, as a snub to the trade embargo imposed by Saudi Arabia, the United
Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt at the time.5 In Asia, the sustained efforts of the
Indonesian state to claim the creation of batik—a traditional technique of dyeing cloth
with wax—as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage of humanity also underlie issues of
a diplomatic nature. Indeed, the origins of the technique are far from clear, and Malaysia
also sought to claim its heritage as part of its own national identity.6
The diversity of these examples in terms of the nature of the initiatives, the type of
objectives pursued, and the contrast between the regions of the globe they evoke,
showcases the breadth of fashion’s expression in diplomacy. It is precisely the multi-
faceted character of fashion’s influence (cultural, economic, political) that makes it an
especially strategic diplomatic tool, from a practical point of view,7 and a particularly
rich subject of study from an academic point of view. However, this conceptual per-
spective linking fashion and diplomacy does not resonate in the academic literature,
where research combining the two appears only in a scattered, sporadic, and implied
manner.
Two obstacles have likely contributed to this impression of a virtual absence of
documentation on the subject. The first obstacle relates to the traditional division of
academic fields and disciplines likely to be interested in the fashion-diplomacy dyad.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429295607-15
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
228 Vincent Dubé-Senécal and Madeleine Goubau

These theoretical boundaries often act as blinders for researchers; the result is that
knowledge relevant to this topic is built in various silos, each ignoring the others. Yet,
drawing on a variety of approaches, or at least recognizing their contribution, is certainly
useful to understand a subject as polysemic as fashion—a principle acknowledged by
several authors in the field of fashion studies.8
The second obstacle is conceptual in nature and concerns both the notion of fashion
and that of diplomacy. The use of the term “fashion” is accompanied by an ensemble of
assumptions leading to its instinctive association with all things sartorial, upscale,
feminine, and characterized by the incessant change in trends. From a historical per-
spective, haute couture is presented as the most significant institution of contemporary
fashion—implying the domination of women’s sartorial fashion over men’s—because of
the “great masculine renunciation.”9 This phenomenon expresses the shift in fashion
that took place at the turn of the nineteenth century, with men’s dress following a new,
more austere style combining vests and pants with shades of gray.10 On the one hand,
this traditional conception of fashion precludes consideration of other, potentially sig-
nificant aspects of fashion in diplomacy: Contemporary menswear, fast fashion, or even
uniforms. On the other hand, it risks perpetuating some colonial or Eurocentric biases
that tend to associate fashion, and therefore the notions of creativity, modernity, and
renewal, exclusively with Western countries. What the rest of the world creates, pro-
duces, and wears is frequently called ethnic dress or folkloric costume, associated
with the notions of resource-based economy, traditional production, and aesthetics
frozen in time.11
The concept of diplomacy also has its share of vagueness. The variety of terms used
over time to refer to the state’s efforts to influence the opinion or actions of a foreign
public—both in the practice and in the study of diplomacy—might prevent its accurate
documentation and its recognition as a constant through time. Thus, what has been
designated as propaganda, influence communication, cultural diplomacy, or cultural
outreach, to mention only a few terms used, may appear to belong to phenomena that
are unrelated. Yet the labels applied to those actions often depend on the prevailing
nomenclature at the time they arose and on the school of thought to which those who
documented them belonged to.12
This chapter, therefore, intends to suggest ways to firmly anchor the study of fashion’s
influence in diplomacy. In order to overcome the methodological obstacles inherent to a
subject as multifaceted as fashion, we have adopted a transdisciplinary approach at the
junction of the history of international relations, fashion studies, and public diplomacy.
The exercise is broken down into two complementary approaches.
First, we suggest that it is necessary to acknowledge what has already been written
about fashion and diplomacy, regardless of the terms used to refer to the dyad. A his-
toriography of fashion’s diplomatic influence thus makes it possible to account for the
foundations that lead to, and still impact, its study. This is to avoid the mirage of a new
body of knowledge supposedly free from any theoretical background, which would
emerge spontaneously from the use of contemporary concepts to designate the phe-
nomenon. Obviously, this overview involves colossal work that goes beyond the claims
of this chapter. There are indeed bits and pieces of information on the diplomatic role of
fashion—sometimes encountered fortuitously—in a host of books. The collection of
those is modestly undertaken in this chapter from a historical perspective, considered
essential to inform the present both in terms of practice and research. This will be fol-
lowed by a short case study of France’s instrumentalization of fashion’s diplomatic
 Fashion and Diplomacy 229

influence from the 1950s to the 1970s, to illustrate the expression of such an influence
with a key example.
Second, we propose a current and inclusive conceptual framework making it possible
to bring together the work of researchers interested in notions of fashion and diplomacy,
regardless of their theoretical perspectives. Although it is necessary to name things, the
point here is not to put new labels on the phenomenon to create a new study silo. On the
contrary, the idea is to reach broad principles rather than restrictive definitions, allowing
the simultaneous extension and circumscription of what falls under the theme of fashion
and diplomacy.

Fashion’s Multifaceted Influence in International Relations

The study of fashion from a historical perspective was traditionally the preserve of
cultural historians, until business historians added their contribution in the early 2000s
by analyzing fashion production “through the interactions of commerce, culture and
consumer.”13 Within this context, fashion histories—and that of related branches
(perfume, beauty products, ready-to-wear, etc.)—grew exponentially in the last
decade.14 These studies stem from the new business history that merges cultural and
business approaches by focusing “on relationships among enterprise, society, and cul-
ture”15 while recognizing “that there is no such thing as a ‘free market.’”16 As a cor-
ollary to this acknowledgment of the global nature of the business, studies on the
international politics of fashion emerged in the past ten years in parallel to studies on
the political uses of clothing.17 As such, it is only quite recently that fashion has started
to be addressed through the political lens of international relations; the historiography
stands mainly at the confluence of business history, cultural history, and the history of
consumption.18 Thus, cultural studies scholars and business historians have analyzed
fashion’s cultural influence and the business of fashion from a global perspective, taking
into account its transnational nature as a sociocultural phenomenon. However, in so
doing, they have neglected the fact that fashion was also created and disseminated as an
element of international relations and that, as such, it had an influence specific to this
stage: Diplomacy.
Furthermore, it is necessary to note the key importance of French fashion on the
Western fashion system in contemporary historiography. Its authority most notably
stems from what Gilles Lipovetsky designated as the “hundred years’ fashion.” That is, a
period spanning from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s that saw a fashion system
based on two cornerstones: Haute couture and confection (ready-made garments). While
the former created original models, the second mass reproduced them, thus dissemi-
nating fashion chiefly through a top-down process.19 In fact, as Carlo Marco Belfanti
argues in his work on the advent of Italian fashion in the 1950s—and in chapter 24 of
this book—the preeminence of French fashion’s influence was both historically grounded
and a construct of Parisian haute couture that had “portrayed itself as the natural heir to
the primacy in fashion held by seventeenth-century France.”20
Conversely, the pervasiveness of French fashion’s influence did not preclude studies of
the role played by other Western fashion centers as well as that of non-Western civili-
zations, albeit not from a diplomatic perspective. In his work on the cultural history of
fashion, Belfanti examined the sociocultural influence of fashion in the three great Asian
civilizations of India, China, and Japan, which took place independently of the Western
fashion system. The only distinction between the Asian and Western systems was the
230 Vincent Dubé-Senécal and Madeleine Goubau

scale of the phenomenon, with the influence of fashion extending to a larger part of
Western societies compared with that of Asian societies. This was mainly due to “the
increasing availability of items of clothing and ‘trendy’ accessories of contained cost, for
example populuxe goods,” that is, affordable goods with a veneer of luxury.21 This
perspective was revisited recently by Penelope Francks, regarding Japan specifically, as
part of a wider literature on the sociocultural and business influences of non-Western
fashion.22 In her work on the kimono and the economic development of Japan, Francks
revealed that what had been considered luxury fashions with limited influence in society
became, in fact, a mass-market force before the globalization of the Western fashion
system.23 In addition to testifying to the very real influence of non-Western fashion, these
studies showcase the importance of cultural and business perspectives in the study of
fashion’s influence. Furthermore, they show that it goes even beyond that of French
fashion, whose influence, while preponderant both historically and in academia, was
obviously not all-encompassing. This is compounded by the historiography on Western
fashions that, while acknowledging the influence of French fashion on the Western
fashion system, still recognizes the polymorphism and polycentrism of fashion’s influ-
ence following World War II—that is, the steady rise in prominence of other Western
fashion centers (Florence, Rome, Milan, London, New York) that paralleled the over-
lapping decline of haute couture and growth of ready-to-wear in the second half of the
twentieth century.24
This short historiography highlights the fact that the histories of fashion and of its
influence have encompassed both the sociocultural aspect of fashion’s immaterial nature
(ideas, brands, designs, images) and the socioeconomic aspect of the fashion business
(manufacturers, department stores, couture houses, trend forecasters, fashion magazines).
This was initially done from the perspective of Western fashion systems, with non-Western
perspectives added only recently. Insofar as these studies have touched upon the interna-
tional influence of fashion, they have done so either anecdotally to illustrate a change of
historical context or to testify to fashion’s importance from the perspective of consumers
or producers. However, we argue that by examining—even indirectly—this international
influence, these studies reveal a multifaceted influence of fashion that is of interest to
diplomacy. While researchers in the last decade have tried to put their finger on this reality,
they have usually focused on the use of clothing to convey political messages and not on
fashion’s diplomatic influence on the international scene in a sense that could be compared
to other forms of influence used by states, such as cultural events, commercial events, and
scientific cooperation. Since in this chapter we seek to define the diplomatic influence of
fashion as something that is, in itself, both of interest to states as well as possible to study
from an academic perspective, it is useful to draw on a historical example. To do so, we
singled out the case of postwar France for two main reasons.
First, we argue that the case of France is paradigmatic because of its scope. Indeed,
while acknowledging that French fashion was not unique in its global influence among
Western and non-Western fashion systems, we recognize that it nonetheless had a pre-
eminent influence on global women’s fashion and that, as such, it had the potential to
interest French diplomatic agents. Just as Véronique Pouillard focuses in her book on the
transatlantic fashion industry on “the relation between Paris and New York as para-
digmatic, but not unique”—because, among other things, “firms based in Paris set the
tone for a global fashion culture, especially in terms of women’s fashion”—we focus on
the case of France as being paradigmatic, but not unique, for studying fashion’s diplo-
matic influence.25
 Fashion and Diplomacy 231

Second, the French government directly subsidized promotional actions with a dip-
lomatic undertone starting in the 1950s. While government encouragement to partici-
pate in international expositions goes back at least to the second half of the nineteenth
century in France, as is discussed by Elizabeth Block in her 2021 book Dressing Up, this
indirect encouragement shifts to a full-blown subsidy scheme after World War II.26 As
such, France implemented two postwar aid-to-couture plans between 1952 and 1981
that are the origins of the creation in 1984 of DEFI, a trade committee dedicated to the
development and promotion of French textiles and apparel, which remains active
today.27 France’s first aid-to-couture plan—that started in 1952 as a subsidy to en-
courage the use of French fabrics in haute couture collections—progressively turned
toward promotional actions abroad, with the percentage of subsidies allocated to such
actions almost tripling from 12.5 percent in 1952 to 36.2 percent in 1960.28 At the time,
the promotional actions involved participation in fairs and events abroad. Such activities
continued to be subsidized in the 1960s. Following the end of the initial aid-to-couture
plan in 1960, the remainder of the plan’s funding was allotted in 1961, effectively
subsidizing promotional actions until 1967.29 A new plan then emerged in 1968 that was
dedicated solely to subsidizing promotional actions by members of the Chambre
Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne (CSCP), the trade association for Parisian coutu-
riers.30 This new plan added a layer to the initially subsidized activities by also directing
funds to the production of promotional movies that were disseminated worldwide by the
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.31

The Diplomatic Relevance of Fashion’s Influence: The Case of Postwar France

In this section, we look at the case of postwar France, whose paradigmatic nature
contrasts with other national cases of state intervention in favor of fashion industries.
We start by briefly discussing the Italian case, in which the links between fashion and the
state are obvious but their diplomatic significance is less clear.32 There are two key
differences between the French and the Italian cases. First, in Italy, there was no direct
involvement of diplomatic agents. This difference stems from the centralization of
France’s postwar subsidies to its fashion industry, through the aid-to-couture plans,
combined with the centralization of the couturiers’ representation within the CSCP.
Second, while in France the only major fashion center was Paris, there were multiple
fashion centers competing for notoriety in Italy.
As discussed by Valeria Pinchera and Diego Rinallo in their study of the emergence of
Italy as a fashion country after World War II, by the turn of the 1950s, Italy harbored
four fashion centers. These were Turin’s Ente Italiano Moda (EIM), Milan’s Centro
Italiano Moda (CIM), Rome’s Comitato della Moda (CM), and Florence’s Italian
fashion shows, set up by Giovanni Battista Giorgini, which debuted on February 12,
1951.33 This decentralization made it more difficult for Italian fashion to foster national
branding; the decentralized model of events pitted numerous Italian cities and regions
against one another, unlike French fashion, which exclusively centered on Paris. In short,
as Pinchera and Rinallo explain regarding this distinction between the Italian and French
models, “The scale of place branding initiatives is not necessarily the nation. In this
sense, French couturiers were an ideal, but not necessarily typical situation.”34
This early postwar distinction between the French and Italian fashion systems is
compounded by the specific postwar French diplomatic context. Starting in 1947, France
agreed to be part of the U.S.-led Marshall Plan aid scheme, which, in France, was
232 Vincent Dubé-Senécal and Madeleine Goubau

paralleled by the Plan Monnet that directly linked the achievement of its objectives to the
American credits of the Marshall Plan.35 This set in motion the reconstruction of the
country’s economic structure through a mixed economy based on five-year plans, which
continued up until the 1990s.36 This planning context had an undeniable influence on
the status of French fashion. This was reflected in the 1948 Plan Council’s report on the
modernization of the textile industry stating that the “specialty fabrics” (haute
nouveauté) used in French haute couture creations had to promote French fabrics in
foreign markets, thus integrating fashion into France’s commercial diplomacy.37
As noted by historian Laurence Badel, France’s postwar commercial diplomacy ex-
plored strategies to export not only goods or services but also what were deemed
“universalizable values” through international fairs and technical exhibitions. In turn,
Badel explained, this inaugurated “a prestigious commercial diplomacy that participated
in the affirmation of the regained grandeur” of France.38 It is within this context that the
state-sponsored promotional actions of haute couture in foreign markets between 1952
and 1981 mobilized the prestige of French fashion as a tool for commercial diplomacy
and for national prestige.
An early example of French diplomats’ interest in the influence of fashion as part of
haute couture promotional events abroad appears in a series of eight letters from French
ambassadors, commercial counselors, and consuls dated between February and April
1955 and collected by Christian Dior Export. These letters had been written in response
to a promotional tour organized by the House of Dior that had taken place between
September and November 1954 in 17 cities across 12 countries in Latin America and the
Caribbean.39 The goal of Dior with this tour was to participate in galas and prestige
events organized in the presence of foreign dignitaries (usually the wife of the host
country’s president), the national press, and French diplomatic agents abroad. This
strategy, adopted by Dior in 1954, followed an exchange of views between Jacques
Rouët, the company’s executive officer, and the members of the aid-to-couture com-
mission in a meeting held on January 29, 1953. On this occasion, Rouët informed the
members of the commission that following his trip to South America in June 1952, he
had realized that made-to-measure clothing no longer existed in these countries, having
been replaced by American ready-to-wear. For this reason, he encouraged the organi-
zation of prestigious promotional events in order to attract the interest of authorities in
the targeted countries.40 In turn, the French diplomatic interest in such promotional
events can be summarized by the example of Lionel Vasse, the French ambassador in
Panama, who acknowledged it in the following terms:

I consider that an event of the kind of yours contributes to making known to

Panamanians that France remains the country of elegance and good taste and that its
couturiers are at the forefront of women’s fashion. At a time when we tend too much
to minimize real values in favor of ephemeral achievements, we must remind abroad
that France still has great permanent values such as “Haute Couture” that you have,
so fortunately, portrayed here.41

This assessment of the French ambassador in 1955 is fundamental for two reasons.
First, by referring to the importance of disseminating French values through haute
couture and women’s fashion, it directly ties into what Badel defined as postwar French
prestige-based commercial diplomacy: That is, a practice seeking to mobilize and to
communicate French ideas and culture in support of, as well as in addition to, French
 Fashion and Diplomacy 233

commercial events abroad. Second, it highlights the emergence of what would become
the core expectation of French diplomatic agents regarding haute couture and French
fashion from then on.
Starting in 1957, subsidized couturiers became a fixture in promotional events
abroad. These events mostly took place as part of either French Weeks or three-week-
long French Fortnights that combined cultural events (e.g., the showing of French movies
or French plays) with the selling of French products by the host city’s department stores
and boutiques. In fact, this approach to promotional events through haute couture at the
junction of prestige and commerce was codified in a memorandum from François
Gavoty, the French commercial counselor in the United States, on December 6, 1960.
This document explained that haute couture was to be one of the highlights (“un des
‘clous’”) of the French Fortnights in order to ensure wide media coverage.42
Following the end of the first aid-to-couture plan in 1960, the government kept funding
couture’s promotional events by dedicating the remainder of the unused funds to such
actions from 1961 to 1967. Between these years, the subsidized haute couture actions
included participation in events as varied as a prestige gala for the benefit of cancer
research in Chicago in 1962 or a show in Montréal during the 1967 Universal
Exposition.43 In fact, with the advent of the haute couture movie subsidies during the
second aid-to-couture plan, French diplomatic interest only grew. These 26-minute movies
displaying haute couture collections and disseminated globally by the French embassies
offered new opportunities. As explained in Vincent Dubé-Senécal’s work on the 1967–81
aid-to-couture plan, this was made clear at the turn of 1976 through letters dated October
1975 to January 1976 from 12 French ambassadors and consuls that argued for the need to
obtain more copies of these promotional movies.44 These letters testified to the great
interest shown by television broadcasters with Jean Louis Mandereau, the French
ambassador to Bolivia, confirming it “was an efficient means of cultural action.”45
By the end of the second aid-to-couture plan in 1981, fashion’s diplomatic influence was
clearly defined as part of France’s postwar prestige-based commercial diplomacy. This
attests to the historical relevance of the study of fashion and diplomacy through the tan-
gible interest of diplomatic agents in its influence. However, as stated in the introduction,
we believe that to fully take into account its multifaceted character, the fashion-diplomacy
dyad would be best served by a diversity of academic perspectives—and by research
beyond the case of France, which serves only as a revealing example of the phenomenon.

Operationalizing Fashion as an Instrument of Diplomatic Influence

In the previous sections, we have demonstrated that fashion was mobilized as part of the
diplomacy of states and that foundations for its study from the perspectives of business,
culture, and politics already exist. As such, we now have to reframe the subject on a
conceptual level. First, we propose to draw inspiration from the field of fashion studies
to extend the scope of the concept of fashion to everything that has to do with fashion.
Second, we circumscribe the concept of diplomacy by borrowing from that of public
diplomacy, which puts the relationship between the state and foreign audiences at the
heart of its definition.

Fashion as Everything That Has to Do with Fashion

In contrast to much academic terminology, the term “fashion” is used so widely in our
daily life that it seems to need no definition. We do not mind hearing related terms—such
234 Vincent Dubé-Senécal and Madeleine Goubau

as “dress,” “style,” or “clothing”—being substituted for it.46 This recklessness, however,

often transposes itself into the work of researchers from different disciplines for whom
fashion is only a passing interest. They candidly use these terms interchangeably or opt
for one of them without necessarily justifying their choice.47 The field of fashion studies,
however, appears to be very useful for defining in an inclusive manner what can be
considered to relate to the presence of fashion in diplomacy. Fashion studies is a par-
ticularly multidisciplinary field that has, as its name suggests, fashion as a central object.
The informal origins of fashion studies are distant in the sense that even the writings of
Plato can be evoked to demonstrate that matters of dress and appearance have always
contributed to reflections on society.48 However, its formalization only dates back to the
1990s. Authors who claim an affinity to fashion studies draw on a common core of
references on fashion both classical (such as the writings of Georg Simmel49 and
Thorstein Veblen50) and recent (such as those of Valerie Steele51 and Jennifer Craik52)
and enrich it with theories from their own discipline. In a chapter titled “Fashion Studies
Takes on Politics,” Hazel Clark and Molly Rottman summarize well the wide spectrum
encompassed by fashion studies:

Fashion Studies examines the nature and condition of fashion in the contemporary
moment, as well as historically and cross-culturally. The field examines fashion as an
embodied practice, with its related industry, production, consumption and performa-
tivity. To quote from the graduate program with which we as the authors are most
closely associated, fashion studies enable the exploration of “fashion as object, image,
text, practice, theory, and concept and develops a critical understanding of fashion
and its complex global intersections with identities, histories, and cultures in the
contemporary world.”53

If fashion studies researchers generally share the concern of defining what fashion is, the
fact remains that their respective definitions are often tinged with their own research
interests. As fashion sociologist Diana Crane noted, they present fashion variously as a form
of material culture related to body adornment and decoration, as a language mobilizing
clothing as a message, as an industry combining creation, production, and marketing or as a
social phenomenon driven by a simultaneous desire of belonging and of differentiation.54 In
addition to cohabiting, these multiple definitions are also the subject of critical work,
particularly with regard to the colonial and Eurocentric biases we discussed earlier.
To take a position by choosing one or the other of these definitions runs the risk of
excluding certain aspects of fashion that have potential value for the study of its influ-
ence in diplomacy, which would be contrary to the objectives pursued in this chapter.
However, arriving at a consensus on how to define fashion is a task that this text does
not aim to achieve. Thus, to grasp the full potential of the role of fashion in diplomacy,
we suggest instead to simply consider it as broadly and inclusively as fashion studies does
as a field, that is to say, as everything that has to do with fashion. A brief parallel with
sport may be useful here to understand what we mean, since it is readily accepted that
sport functions as a tool for diplomacy.55 The way in which academia documents sport
as a tool for public diplomacy reveals the breadth and complexity of the subject. It
includes both the performance of the athletes and the number of medals won, as well as
the prestige attached to the organization of the sporting event or the impact of boy-
cotting a competition, among other things. In other words, it is everything that has to do
with sports. By mobilizing the extent of the understanding of the subject of fashion
 Fashion and Diplomacy 235

within the field of fashion studies, one arrives at a rich and multidimensional conception
of the object of fashion in the context of diplomacy. It is then up to researchers to clearly
state the facets in which they are interested as well as the perspective from which they
approach the topic, but all angles can be considered useful for the legitimate conception
of the theme of fashion in diplomacy.

Public Diplomacy: The State and Its Foreign Audience

To frame the notion of influence orchestrated by the state and directed toward the public
abroad, we turn to public diplomacy. This is a domain of government practice, an
academic field, and the key concept at the heart of the field. Once again, the point here is
not to use this concept to create new blinders, but rather to mobilize its underlying
components and concerns, and use them as rallying points.
As explained by Jan Melissen, one of the key authors interested in the epistemology of
public diplomacy, comparing public diplomacy to traditional diplomacy quickly cap-
tures the essence of what defines each. Traditional diplomacy is the peaceful manage-
ment of the international environment in the form of negotiations between official actors
working for national governments, hence from diplomat to diplomat. Public diplomacy
is mainly distinguishable from traditional diplomacy by its audience: The public.56
It is quite widely considered that the term “public diplomacy” was coined in 1965 by
Edmund Gullion, an American diplomat who later became dean of the Fletcher School of
Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. According to Nicholas J. Cull, one of the most
prolific authors in public diplomacy,57 the term was immediately adopted by the U.S.
government as it needed a “benign alternative to terms like propaganda and psycho-
logical warfare to allow a clearer distinction between its own democratic information
practices and the policies pursued by the Soviet Union.”58 Public diplomacy, named as
such, was therefore practiced by states before academic researchers documented it. It has
even become a buzzword59 for politicians and diplomats with the popularization in the
early 2000s of the concept of soft power.60
The importance of public diplomacy has led to its institutionalization in academia.
Public diplomacy as a field of study is particularly multidisciplinary.61 Like fashion
studies, it is defined above all by its main object of study—namely, the concept of public
diplomacy—and by a set of concerns shared by the community that studies it from a
multitude of approaches. The result is a fragmented research horizon. In her book, The
Future of US Public Diplomacy: An Uncertain Faith, Kathy Fitzpatrick identified and
analyzed more than 150 definitions, from which she drew six different perspectives
underlying public diplomacy’s primary functions: Advocacy/influence, communication/
informational, relational, promotional, warfare/propaganda, and political.62 While these
angles may prove useful in accounting for the different facets of public diplomacy, the
community of researchers belonging to this field still debate some common major issues,
including the sine qua non involvement of the state in considering whether an initiative
falls under the scope of public diplomacy. In other words, some researchers believe that
in our era, when government entities must contend with more and more new actors on
the international stage—companies, NGOs, transnational groups, and even individuals
rising in power on a global scale—the concept of public diplomacy should include in-
itiatives carried out independently by these non-state actors.63
Although we propose to acknowledge the contribution of non-state actors in public
diplomacy—how could it be otherwise from the moment fashion is mobilized as an
236 Vincent Dubé-Senécal and Madeleine Goubau

instrument of influence?—we also think it is important to maintain the role of the state
as an essential element in the definition of public diplomacy in the study of the fashion-
diplomacy dyad. Of course, the way a celebrity, or even a foreign tourist, is dressed
might influence how people abroad perceive his or her home country. However,
appending the concept of “diplomacy” to such examples dilutes its meaning and appears
counterproductive to our exercise of circumscribing an area of research.64 Thus, we
propose the following definition of public diplomacy: The efforts of a state to commu-
nicate with foreign audiences in order to influence their perceptions and/or actions and
ultimately serve its own interests.65 It should be noted that the notion of communication
here takes on a very broad meaning according to which all behaviors and actions have
the value of a message.66
It is above all the elements of this definition taken for what they evoke, and not the
expression “public diplomacy” as such, that should serve as rallying points for re-
searchers interested in the fashion-diplomacy dyad. As mentioned earlier, whether they
do so using the vocabulary of their discipline or that encountered in the archival corpus
they consult does not fundamentally matter as long as the basic ideas behind the research
interests are the same. These could be summarized in two points: The involvement of the
state in the initiative, and the intentional targeting of foreign audiences.

Conclusion
Through this chapter, we outlined the study of fashion and diplomacy; that is, the ex-
pression of the diplomatic influence of fashion in international relations, the nature of its
various manifestations and that of its observation by both historical actors and scholars.
In order to do so, we did not seek to criticize the current historiography but to build on
its wide-reaching studies of fashion and its global and international influence. As such,
while acknowledging that the diplomatic influence of fashion had yet to be analyzed, the
historiography of fashion’s influence revealed both its multifaceted and international
natures. In turn, these serve as a starting point to define the diplomatic influence of
fashion.
This led us to exemplify the expression of the diplomatic influence of fashion through
the case study of the French postwar aid-to-couture plans while contextualizing it by
looking at the Italian postwar fashion rebirth that took place concurrently. This helped
us historicize the diplomatic influence of fashion by testifying to the tangible interest in
fashion’s influence as expressed in archival records by French diplomatic agents.
Additionally, by looking at the ties between haute couture, fashion, and the French
postwar prestige-based commercial diplomacy, we showcased the multifaceted influence
of fashion at the confluence between national prestige and commerce. Consequently, this
contributes to an opening of the research field of fashion and diplomacy to a wider range
of states; France is not a unique case. That is why we argue that the operationalization of
fashion’s influence as an instrument of diplomacy be grounded not on single national
examples but on a conceptual construct mobilizing the theoretical tools of both fashion
studies and public diplomacy.
Framed as suggested, the project promises to be rich and diverse. The theme of fashion
in diplomacy can be studied from a host of complementary disciplinary perspectives and
is embodied in a multitude of historical and contemporary cases—anecdotal or
systemic—all over the world. As we have shown in this chapter, this was obvious in
France’s postwar desire to mobilize the aura of prestige and creativity of haute couture
 Fashion and Diplomacy 237

for political, cultural, and commercial purposes with different audiences internationally.
Still, we argue that the fashion-diplomacy dyad is also to be explored in other, more
contemporary examples such as the attention paid by Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau in 2017 to the patterns on his socks, which featured rainbow colors and the
words “Eid Mubarak.” While distinctly different than the case of postwar France,
Trudeau’s mobilization of fashion serves to illustrate the scope of fashion’s influence,
which at the time killed two birds with one stone during a gay pride parade that coin-
cided with the end of Ramadan. Indeed, this episode is nothing superficial in light of the
Trudeau government’s foreign policy priorities, focusing on the promotion of the image
of a country made prosperous thanks to its multiculturalism and acceptance of all kinds
of diversities.67
Ultimately, what this example shares with the cases of France and Italy pertains to the
main goal we set out to reach with this chapter: To integrate the historiographical inputs
on the international influence of fashion into the diplomatic perspective of international
relations in order to define fashion as a vector of influence that can be mobilized as part
of diplomacy. In so doing, we propose an approach that integrates fashion’s multifaceted
influence in order to come to grips with the fashion-diplomacy dyad as a whole instead
of looking at each component individually, either through the study of the political use
of clothing or that of the business of fashion.

Funding Acknowledgment
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No.
886026.

Notes
1 Thierry Maillet, “Histoires de la médiation,” 414.
2 Block, Dressing Up, 113.
3 Ibid., 110.
4 Friedman, “What Michelle Obama Wore and Why It Mattered.”
5 Paton, “Why Soft Power Is in Style in Qatar.”
6 Gelling, “Score One for Indonesia in the War Over Batik.”
7 Dubé-Senécal, La mode française, 270–1.
8 For examples of multidisciplinary works that can be located in the fold of fashion studies see,
among others: Gonzá lez and Bovone, eds., Identities through Fashion; Damhorst, Miller-
Spillman and Michelman, The Meanings of Dress; Haye and Wilson, Defining Dress.
9 For the significance of haute couture, see: Lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, 82, 108; For the
quotation, see: Steele, Fifty Years of Fashion, 2–3.
10 Roche, La culture des apparences, 62.
11 For a critical approach to what underlies the concept of fashion see, among others: Craik and
Jansen, “Constructing National Fashion Identities,” 3–8; Jansen and Craik,
“Introduction,” 1–22.
12 Bruce Gregory makes a comprehensive inventory of the many theories and currents of thought
that have influenced the emergence of public diplomacy as a practice and a field of study,
starting from the 1920s. Gregory, “Public Diplomacy,” 274–90.
13 Blaszczyk, “Rethinking Fashion,” 1.
14 Blaszczyk and Pouillard, eds., European Fashion; Donzé and Fujioka, eds., Global Luxury;
Jones, Beauty Imagined.
15 Blaszczyk and Wubs, “Beyond the Crystal Ball,” 5.
16 Blaszczyk and Pouillard, “Fashion as Enterprise,” 9.
238 Vincent Dubé-Senécal and Madeleine Goubau

17 Burger-Roussennac and Pastorello, “Se vêtir de/en politique,” 11–17; Lemire, ed., Force of
Fashion; Behnke, ed., International Politics of Fashion; Bartlett, ed., Fashion and Politics.
18 For more details on this historiography, see: Dubé-Senécal, “La mode française,” 8–19; Bass-
Krueger and Kurkdjian, “State of Fashion Studies in France,” 228–9.
19 Lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, 80–1.
20 Belfanti, “Renaissance and ‘Made in Italy’,” 64.
21 Belfanti, “Was Fashion a European Invention?,” 442–3; Belfanti, Histoire culturelle de la
mode, 215–16. For the definition of “populuxe goods” see, among others: Cissie Fairchilds,
“Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods,” 228–48; Maxine Berg, “New Commodities,
Luxuries and Their Consumers,” 63–86.
22 See note 6 where the author refers to the works of Antonia Finnane on China (Changing
Clothes in China, 2018) and Michele Maskiell on India and Pakistan (“Honour, Desire, and
Fashion,” 224–45): Francks, “Was Fashion a European Invention?,” 333, 355.
23 Francks, “Was Fashion a European Invention?,” 354.
24 Belfanti, Histoire culturelle de la mode, 12; For the influence of other Western fashion centers
see, among others: Steele, “Italian Fashion and America,” 496–505; White, Reconstructing
Italian Fashion; Belfanti, “Renaissance and ‘Made in Italy’,” 53–66; Steele, Fifty Years of
Fashion; Blanco F., “The Postmodern Age: 1960–2010,” 99–111.
25 Pouillard, Paris to New York, 2.
26 Block, Dressing Up, 69–84.
27 “Les missions du DEFI”, DEFI; France, Sénat, “Article 17.” For the advent of the professional
committees for economic development (CPDE) of which DEFI is an example, see: Dubé-
Senécal, “Fashion’s Diplomatic Role,” 13. For a summary of the succession of these aid plans,
see: Grumbach, Histoires de la mode, 81–3.
28 Dubé-Senécal, La mode française, 138–9, 258.
29 Archives nationales de France (ANF hereafter), 19771635/22, Aid-to-couture Meeting Report,
9 June 1961, 3.
30 ANF, 19771638/3, CIRIT File D 6 Report, ‘Aide à la Couture Parisienne’, 9 May 1967, 2–3; For
the percentages, see: ANF, 19771638/3, Untitled letter from CIRIT president, E. Senn, to CSCP
president, 14 June 1967, 1; ANF, 19771635/50, CIRIT Meeting Minutes, 19 May 1967, 8.
31 ANF, 19771635/40, 1969 Activity Report, Undated, 2; ANF, 19830427/5, Annex ‘Rapport
sur les manifestations de propaganda de l’année 1974’ of the CIRIT Report for File C 1108, 21
September 1974, 1; ANF, 19771635/40, CIRIT Report for File D 213, 24 November 1969, 3;
ANF, 19771635/40, CIRIT Report for File D 213, ‘Aide à la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture
(Propriété artistique, Propagande) Film sur la couture - Exposition de Buenos-Aires’, 15 June
1970, 2.
32 For an analysis of the Italian subsidies of their fashion industry see, especially: Di
Giangirolamo, Institutions for Fashion, 110–12.
33 Pinchera and Rinallo, “Emergence of Italy,” 157–9.
34 Pinchera and Rinallo, “Emergence of Italy,” 170.
35 Mioche, Le Plan Monnet, 201; Margairaz, “Autour des accords Blum-Byrnes,” 469–70.
36 Gœtschel and Touchebœuf, La IVe République, 124; Margairaz, L’État, les finances et
l’économie, 1267.
37 ANF, 19771635/26, “Commissariat général du Plan de modernisation et d’équipement –
Rapport définitif d’ensemble de la Commission de modernisation du textile,” 1948, 23, 103.
38 “Une diplomatie commerciale de prestige qui participa à l’affirmation de la grandeur
recouvrée.” Badel, Diplomatie et grands chantiers, 319–20. We did the translation to English.
39 The countries and cities visited were: Caracas and Maracaibo in Venezuela, Bogota, Medellin,
Quali and Baranquilla in Colombia, Quito and Guayaquil in Ecuador, Lima in Peru, Panama
City in Panama, San Salvador in San Salvador, Mexico City in Mexico, Havana in Cuba,
Kingston in Jamaica, Port-au-Prince in Haiti, San Juan in Puerto Rico, and Curaçao in
Curaçao. ANF, 19771635/23, Untitled letter from J. Rouët to the president of the Aid-to-
Couture Commission, August 25, 1954.
40 ANF, 19771635/21, Meeting Minutes from the aid-to-couture commission, January 29, 1953, 2.
41 “Je considère qu’une manifestation du genre de la vôtre contribue à faire connaître aux
panaméens que la France demeure le pays de l’élégance et du bon goût et que ses couturiers
sont à l’avant-garde de la mode féminine. À une époque où l’on a trop tendance à minimiser les
 Fashion and Diplomacy 239

valeurs réelles au profit d’éphémères réalisations, nous nous devons de rappeler à l’étranger que
la France possède toujours de grandes valeurs permanentes telle que la ‘Haute Couture’ que
vous avez, si heureusement, représentée ici.” ANF, 19771635/24, Untitled letter from Lionel
Vasse, French ambassador in Panama, to Hélène Levacher of Christian Dior Export, March
24, 1955, 1. We did the translation to English.
42 Archives of the French Embassy in the United States, 4095, “Note sur l’organisation de
Quinzaines françaises par de grands magasins américains,” December 6, 1960. This is also
studied in: Vincent Dubé-Senécal, “Fashion, Industry and Diplomacy,” 17–19.
43 ANF, 19771635/19, CSCP Letter to the Government Commissioner, February 9, 1962; CSCP
Report on Couture Events in Montréal, June 5, 1967, 1–2; ANF, 19771635/20, Letter from
the State Controller to the Textile Office, June 16, 1967, 1–2.
44 These examples come from the following article: Dubé-Senécal, “Fashion’s Diplomatic Role,”
1–22. The letters are all part of the following folder: ANF, 19830427/18, Annex “Rapport sur
les manifestations de propagande prévues pour 1976” to a letter from Jacques Mouclier,
Couture Federation president, to the CIRIT president, August 4, 1976.
45 “A été un moyen d’action culturelle efficace.” ANF, 19860427/18, Letter from Jean Louis
Mandereau, French ambassador in Bolivia, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, “Film’mode
Automne-Hiver 75/76’,” September 19, 1975, 1. We did the translation to English.
46 For authors interested in the definitions of these terms and the links between them see, among
others: Tulloch, “Style – Fashion-Dress,” 273–304; Barnard, Fashion as Communication;
Damhorst, Miller-Spillman and Michelman, The Meanings of Dress.
47 Goubau, “Note de lecture,” 111–15.
48 Plato, “La République,” Second volume, trad. Victor Cousin, quoted in Godart, ed., Penser la
mode.
49 Simmel, “Fashion,” 130–55.
50 Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class.
51 In addition to being the founder of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture,
the first peer-reviewed scholarly journal in Fashion Studies, Valerie Steele has published and
edited a host of books and articles that are key in fashion studies, among others: Steele, Paris
Fashion; Steele, Berg Companion to Fashion.
52 Jennifer Craik has published and edited a host of books and articles that are key in fashion
studies, among others: Craik, Face of Fashion; Craik, Fashion.
53 “Fashion Studies,” Parsons School of Design. This is quoted in: Clark and Rottman. “Fashion
Studies Takes on Politics,” 188.
54 Crane, “Introduction,” 2.
55 On the matter of the influence of sport in diplomacy see, among others: Redeker, “Sport as an
Opiate of International Relations,” 494–500; MacAloon, “Turn of Two Centuries,” 31–44.
56 Melissen, “New Public Diplomacy,” 5.
57 CPD Blog, “What’s in the Work for Nicholas J. Cull?”
58 Cull, Public Diplomacy, 17.
59 Melissen, “New Public Diplomacy,” 8.
60 Nye, Bound to Lead.
61 Gilboa, “Searching for a Theory of Public Diplomacy,” 56.
62 Fitzpatrick, Future of US Public Diplomacy, 89.
63 On the matter of non-state actors in public diplomacy see, among others: Goodman, “Role of
Business in Public Diplomacy,” 5–7; Hocking, “Privatizing Diplomacy?,” 147–52; La Porte,
“Impact of ‘Intermestic’ Non-State Actors,” 441–58; Muldoon, “Diplomacy of Business,”
341–59.
64 Riordan, “Stop Inventing ‘New Diplomacies’.”
65 This definition is the one crafted by Madeleine Goubau in her doctoral thesis, in progress, on
the theoretical conceptualization of dress as a tool for public diplomacy, from a commu-
nication perspective. As expected in the appropriation of the key concepts of a thesis, each
facet of its formulation has been influenced by a vast corpus bringing together the nuanced
thoughts of many authors in the field of public diplomacy. To name them all in this chapter
would be impossible. For a digest of the most recent research concerns and perspectives that
have guided this definition, see the collective work by Melissen and Wang, eds., Debating
Public Diplomacy.
240 Vincent Dubé-Senécal and Madeleine Goubau

66 This communicational perspective borrows from the Palo Alto School. For an overview of its
approach, see Picard and Marc, L’École de Palo Alto; For some of the foundation work of
the Palo Alto School, see: Bateson and Ruesch, Communication et société; Watzlawick,
L’invention de la réalité.
67 Friedman, “Justin Trudeau’s Sock Diplomacy.”

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