I have always been sceptical about the existence of the one-metre peinetón. (For those of you unfamiliar with this fashion accessory, the peinetón is a large, decorative hair comb worn especially by women in nineteenth-century Río de la Plata.) I've been searching – in a very desultory way – for concrete examples of this fabulous item for nearly a decade. Regina Root's Couture and Consensus not only convinced me that these mammoths of the coiffure really existed, but also provides a rich framework for interpreting their cultural resonance. More broadly, Root shows very clearly that attitudes towards dress and fashion intersect in interesting ways with political and social developments. Couture and Consensus studies the use of fashion as a space for political debate in nineteenth-century Argentina by examining its relation to two themes: the conflicts between Federalists and Unitarians during the Rosas era and the anxieties provoked by women's participation in the public sphere. The historical material is bracketed by an introduction and conclusion that hint at long-term continuities and argue that these nineteenth-century debates retain their political relevance in today's post-dictatorship, crisis-ridden Argentina.

The first sections explore the efforts by the Rosas regime to regiment the clothing (and facial hair) worn by Argentines along political lines. Gaucho dress and abundant moustaches signalled an approved Federalist masculinity. Unitarians were derided as effete, citified subversives. Police records detail their sartorial failings alongside their political deviance. ‘He is a Unitarian with a frock coat who has also removed his moustache’ reads one entry (p. 27). Federalist newspapers publicised such attitudes and popular songs such as the ‘Canción del Violín’ celebrated the punishments Federalists hoped to inflict on their emasculated opponents. Unitarians responded in kind, composing trenchant critiques of Argentine fashion that functioned as veiled political tracts.

Debates about fashion not surprisingly also embraced the female population, and Couture and Consensus offers a fascinating discussion of the significance of the peinetón in mid-century Buenos Aires. These large hair ornaments, Root argues, gave women an unignorable public presence that many men found highly disturbing. Satirical caricatures document the anxiety that women were taking over public space, while short stories and magazine articles insinuated that there were no lengths to which women would not go to acquire these costly adornments. The very word peinetón became an epithet for a politically engaged woman, the Argentine equivalent of a blue-stocking. Fashion writing, in turn, allowed women a public voice which, Root shows, they sometimes used to criticise the restrictions Argentine society imposed on them. Both ‘fashion novels’ and magazines provided a space for women to debate issues of female emancipation and to argue against the strictures of nineteenth-century culture: ‘Through fashion writing, authors could embrace the feminine styles of the day as they worked to piece together a narrative of emancipation’ (p. 137). Altogether, Root suggests that, far from being a meaningless, consumeristic abomination, fashion provided a language for the articulation of some of the most central issues on post-colonial Argentine politics and society.

At the same time, Couture and Consensus provoked within me a contrarian voice that questioned the celebration of fashion as a site of resistance. Was all fashion writing in nineteenth-century Argentina emancipatory? How truly democratic is the concept of ‘good taste’? The book would have been even stronger had it engaged with the fuller range of ideological positions that fashion is capable of representing. It's interesting that the editor of the Argentine edition of Elle defends fashion writing as an effective way of advancing the cause of women's rights (p. xxviii), but I wanted to hear a bit more from the many commentators who might disagree with such propositions, both now and in the nineteenth century. The book thus consists of a series of snapshots or close-ups, and there were times when I wanted a more panoramic view. I was at times also frustrated by the approach to footnoting. What is the evidence for the assertion that schoolchildren dared not remove their Federalist insignia (p. 10)? Or that few women of the period dared to wear fuchsia (p. 130)? Or that prostitutes set the fashion agenda (p. 136)? I have very great confidence in Root's historical precision, and don't doubt that these claims are true, but we're not offered any evidence to support them. But any book review that reaches the stage of carping about the referencing needs to reassess its priorities, or go home to spend more time with its family, or whatever the current political jargon might be. Couture and Consensus is a stimulating and original book that helps put fashion firmly on the historical map, which is exactly where it belongs.