Jeanne Mammen: Fashioning the 'Neue Frau'

Jeanne Mammen was ideally situated to explore the “multifaceted nature of the ‘Neue Frau’ stereotype” and her work refutes the argument that women consumed mass media uncritically. Mammen’s own Weimar-era fashion illustrations demonstrate her “intimate familiarity with the marketable icon of the ‘Neue Frau’” while offering a social critique of urban gender roles by examining the relationships of the ‘Neue Frau’. Her work managed to visually reflect patriarchal critiques that viewed the modern women as bored and apathetic, without necessarily confirming this view. This paper will employ close visual analysis of a cross section of Jeanne Mammen’s Weimar-era works and contemporary fashion illustration, as well as an analysis of secondary sources in order to show that Mammen reclaimed the male dominated language of fashion in order to explore and contradict popular conceptions of the modern woman as a superficial