We are resuming our European Spa Online Seminar Series!

Isabelle Voßkötter-Berens from University of Paderborn will present her research on Fashion in fashionable spa towns - The German spas Bad Homburg v. d. H., Bad Nauheim and Wiesbaden as fashion venues

All are welcome!

Please join us on Zoom:

https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/83002803556

Whether in the morning at the drinking fountain, playing tennis on the sports field, on the promenade or in the evening at the theatre of the Kurhaus - spa towns with their ideal-typical infrastructure of spa facilities and gardens as well as event repertoires and daily programmes offered all kinds of opportunities for encounters and interaction of predominantly pleasure-seeking guests. These socially coded occasions required appropriate dress and behaviour.

The PhD thesis examines and compares this occasion-related women's dress in the "Modebäder" (fashionable spa town) during the 1910s using the examples of Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Bad Nauheim and Wiesbaden. The period under investigation focuses on the development of the pre-war period (1910-1914) and the wartime period (1914-1918).

The lecture will use a few selected examples to show and explain the relationship between clothing practices and spa towns. It will show that clothing was not only used for self-representation and communication during spa visits, but also (actively) helped to shape bathing and spa culture as an object of everyday social practice.

Short biography:

Isabelle Voßkötter-Berens studied history at the university of Hamburg, is doing her PhD on the topic of "Occasion-related women's dress in ‘Modebädern’ Bad Homburg v. d. H., Bad Nauheim and Wiesbaden in the 1910s" with Prof. Dr. Kerstin Kraft at the Department of Cultural Studies of Fashion and Textiles at the University of Paderborn. Since February 2022, her dissertation project has been funded by the Hesse Scholarship.