Aris Kafantogias

Aris Kafantogias studied history and archeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He completed his Masters’ degree at the same university in the field of European history. He is currently a doctoral student at the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna. From 2018 to 2023 he was research assistant at the Department of Economic and Social History. As a doctoral student and research assistant, he has attended and given lectures at international conferences, workshops, as well as at courses in other universities. He has also published multiple articles in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals. He has designed and held multiple courses on a variety of subjects, such as the history of consumption, the material culture in early modern Europe, or the history of fashion.

Research interests: His research interests lie in the field of the history of consumption in Europe in the early modern period, the study of material culture, the social history of dress and fashion, and the history of nationalism and national movements in Europe.

Current research project: Material Culture and Consumption in Vienna, 1760-1830: Appearance, Clothing, Textiles
The dissertation is embedded in the historical research of consumption in the early modern period. Milestones of research are the theories that attempt to explain the significant increase in consumption in the 18th century, namely theories about consumer revolutions, about the emergence of the consumer society or about the industrious revolution. Historical research describes consumption in Europe as a dynamic phenomenon based on innovation, liberalization, diversity and individuality. Consumption is seen as the engine of major changes, such as industrialization and the emergence of bourgeois society in the modern era. On this basis, the specifics of the consumption of clothing and textiles in Vienna are examined. The basic parameters of the study are the questions of the quantitative and qualitative changes in clothing consumption in the period, the role of the special social and cultural framework of the city of Vienna, the function of fashion, the perceptions concerning a person’s appearance, and the economic aspects of the phenomenon. In the dissertation, clothing as part of Vienna's material culture is also examined. The goal is to show what functions clothing fulfilled in the context of social practices of public appearance, respectability, sociability, domesticity and hygiene. The sources of the study are probate inventories, the legislation in the period, fashion magazines, contemporary literature on consumption in Vienna, and sample boards of textiles. This multi-perspective analysis enables a deeper understanding of the role of consumption in the emergence of bourgeois society, which is reflected in the clothing of its members, and at the same time places Vienna in the international historical research and narratives of consumption.

Publications:

The catalyst of change? The appearance of Viennese female servants and its relation to fashion in the period, 1760-1823. (in English) In La Moda Come Motore Economico: Innovazione Di Processo e Prodotto, Nuove Strategie Commerciali, Comportamento Dei Consumatori/ Fashion as an Economic Engine: Process and Product Innovation, Commercial Strategies, Consumer Behavior, edited by Giampiero Nigro, 2:251–89. Datini Studies in Economic History. Italy: Firenze University Press, 2022.
Between the Visible and the Invisible, the Practical and the Ornamental: The Body Linen of the Viennese, 1760-1823. (in English) Österreichische Zeitschrift Für Geschichtswissenschaften 30, no. 1 (2019): 144–66 (peer-reviewed)
Textiles and Clothes in the Probate Inventories of Vienna’s Middle Classes, 1783-1823. (in English) In Cotton in Context: Manufacturing, Marketing, and Consuming Textiles in the German-Speaking World, (1500-1900), edited by Kim Siebenhüner, John Jordan, and Gabi Schopf, 4:357–84. Ding, Materialität, Geschichte. Wien-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2019.