Chapter Three - Abstract

Chapter 3: “Refashioning Masculinity in Regency England: Female Fashions Inspired by the Persian Envoy Mirza Abul Hassan Khan and His Circassian Wife”

Humberto Garcia

Abstract: British aristocratic manhood was highly unstable when the envoy Mirza Abul Hassan Khan Shirazi Ilchi traveled from Qajar Iran to Regency England in 1809–1810 and 1819–1820. His new life as a fashion icon allowed metropolitan men and women to normalize heterosexual courtship rituals. Newspapers, magazines, novels, satirical cartoons, and theatrical farces jointly mediated the ambassador's hypermasculinity, and that mediation in the form of Persian clothing fashions would help distinguish effeminate or dandyish relations between men from heteronormative marriage.