Catholic dressing in the spanish franco dictatorship (1939–1975): normative femininity and its sartorial embodiment

Abstract

The Francoist state, in collusion with the Church, tried to domesticate women's bodies and encode dressing patterns in accordance with Catholic moral doctrine. This article interrogates the normative notion of femininity in Francoism, focusing on ecclesiastical discourse and Catholic dress code. The Church dictated dressing norms, and the Franco regime sanctioned to a great extent its sartorial parameters. This paper also explores how women embodied gender ideals and sartorial patterns. I argue that foreign (im)moral influences that fissured normative discourses and sartorial practices from the 1950s onwards, after the international rehabilitation of the dictatorship and the transition from a society marked by an autarkic economic policy to a consumer society. This historical analysis suggests that efforts of (wo)men in positions of power within the Francoist regime and the Catholic Church to control the infiltration of other models and fashions were increasingly unsuccessful