From haute couture to prêt-a-porter, from textile production to designer training, France has historically been at the forefront of fashion and of clothing technology. This cultural investment in both dress and the visual arts provides the underpinning to this module. Unique in UK French Studies curricula, it brings together the academic study of dress history with literary and visual studies, and provides an introduction to the growing discipline of material culture studies. Taught in a mixture of lectures and seminars, the module looks at a range of cultural productions – medieval manuscript illustration, theatre designs, fashion-plates, lifestyle journalism, bande dessinée – and allows students to consider how dress functions as a tool for self- and group definition, and as a means of shaping and interpreting social and personal identity. Across the centuries, in France as elsewhere, what we wear sends out important messages about who we are and how we want others to see us. Getting dressed in the morning will never seem quite so innocent again.