Participant Info
- First Name
- Zara
- Last Name
- Kesterton
- Country
- United Kingdom
- State
- zlk21@cam.ac.uk
- Affiliation
- University of Cambridge
- Website URL
- https://zarakesterton.co.uk/
- Keywords
- France, Fashion, Enlightenment, Flowers, Artificial Flowers, Dress, Natural History, Gender History
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- MA
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I am a fourth-year PhD candidate, supervised by Professor Ulinka Rublack and funded by the Wolfson Foundation. My thesis explores the development of the artificial flower industry in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France.
My research investigates how consumers and producers engaged with ideas about the natural world, especially new advances in botany, through their clothing. I consider how fashion both reflected and stimulated knowledge exchange in Enlightenment France. I am also interested in the ways in which artisanal craft engages the senses and the body. I have trained under expert flower-maker Cyrielle Bonan in Paris to reproduce historical instructions for making artificial flowers.
I hold an MLitt degree in Dress and Textile Histories from the University of Glasgow (2022), an MPhil degree in Early Modern History from the University of Cambridge (2020), and a BA (Hons) in English Literature and History from the University of Durham (2019).
- Recent Publications
- ‘Only illusions are amusing …’: nature, artifice and femininity in eighteenth-century France through the lens of Louis de Carmontelle, French History (2025)Artificial Flowers in the Credit Records of an Eighteenth-Century French Fashion Merchant, The Historical Journal (2024)
- Media Coverage
- Social Media
- Instagram – Artful Flowers
- Country Focus
- France
- Expertise by Geography
- France, Western Europe
- Expertise by Chronology
- 18th century
- Expertise by Topic
- Art & Architectural History, Gender, Material Culture, Museums, Public History, Women
