„Vifter, Juveler og smaa, højhælede Sko“. Mode und Kleidung bei Karen Blixen

Starting from Karen Blixen’s personal interest in fashion and from basic ideas in current fashion-theory, the article wants to explore how clothes and fashion figure in Blixen´s narratives. Examples from her various collections of stories show that clothes are used as a complex sign-system, not only to convey cultural-historical settings or to portray individual fictional characters. The depiction of fashion stages and questions the dichotomies of gender and class, of “Schein und “Sein”, seeming and being, and of constraints and freedom. Most importantly, clothes can function as a cultural code for self-fashioning and an adequate self-expression.