Elegancias and the Parisian Dream: Fashioning Latin American Elites in Early 20th Century Paris

This article examines Elegancias, a Paris-based fashion magazine published between 1911 and 1914, as a vehicle for the transmission of legitimate taste and cultural capital to Latin American elites. Through a historiographical approach grounded in Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, it analyzes how the magazine offered rationalized models of bourgeois refinement through fashion journalism, social chronicles, and advertising. Rather than simply reflecting trends, Elegancias functioned as a pedagogical tool that mediated access to the codes of French haute couture, enabling Latin American readers to participate in the symbolic struggle for distinction and to disassociate themselves from stigmatized figures such as the rastaquouère. By foregrounding the intersections of consumption, symbolic power, and transatlantic cultural exchange, the study reveals how Elegancias operated as an informal yet influential mechanism within the cultural field of early twentieth-century fashion.