Mannequins, muses and maids: Redressing the objectified woman in Phantom Thread and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Dresses in the films Phantom Thread (2017) and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022) are powerful objects. Designed by the fictional Reynolds Woodcock and a fictionalized Christian Dior, the gowns are treasured by most consumers for their beauty and social cachet. But for the working-class heroines who emerge from the shadows to demystify the ‘fashionable’ bodies that produce and consume haute couture, the dresses are ‘ghostly matter’ that not only manifest creative genius and superb workmanship but function as wearable ‘actants’ that transform their lives. Informed by Sartrean existentialism and affect studies, this article examines the gendered dimensions of mid-twentieth-century haute couture production and consumption as they are represented in the two films. Woodcock’s troublesome muse exposes the techniques through which his collectively produced designs are ‘personalized’, while the Dior-desiring charwoman of Mrs. Harris demonstrates her own ‘complex personhood’ as well as that of the instrumentalized ‘hands’ who labour in his name.