The paper examines the representation of women’s bourgeois and aristocratic clothing, dress culture, and fashion in four of Ivan Tavčar’s prose works: Ivan Slavelj (1876), Otok in Struga (1881), Mrtva srca (1884), and Cvetje v jeseni (1917). These literary works, alongside non-literary accounts of clothing and fashion, reveal that Tavčar devoted considerable attention to clothing and women’s fashion, supported moderate fashion and the aesthetics of simple garments, and especially the Slovenian national costume. The semantic field of women’s upper-class clothing in the analysed texts encompasses women’s dresses, skirts, hats, shawls, decorative han-dkerchiefs, cloaks, blouses, shoes, gloves, jewellery, and other accessories (ribbons, ornamental combs, and flowers). Women’s clothing items in the analysed literary works function as a signifier of bourgeois or aristocratic and national identity, form the upper-class settings, expose the false bourgeoisie, reveal socially and culturally conditioned gender identities, enable masking of identity, depict erotic excitement, and help construct the aesthetic stylizations of female characters.
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