Getting Dressed


Book Description

Getting Dressed teaches sociology through the everyday decision of what to wear. It is about the rules that shape how we dress and how and why we conform. It is about how and why we imitate others. We may think about clothing as our personal style and identity. But our personal style is not so personal; it is social, shaped and limited by countless social influences. We use clothes to rank and treat each other as better and worse. Yet we need each other to become who we are when getting dressed. This book is about what we wear, why we wear it, and why it matters.




Conformity in Dress


Book Description




Uniforms Exposed


Book Description

Uniforms are perhaps the most widely worn garments in the world. Craik looks at the meaning of uniforms as well as how they have influenced fashion, and shows the centrality of uniforms to cultural politics. She draws on historical and contemporary examples of uniforms across different cultures.




Buttoned Up


Book Description

Who is today's white-collar man? The world of work has changed radically since The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and other mid-twentieth-century investigations of corporate life and identity. Contemporary jobs are more precarious, casual Friday has become an institution, and telecommuting blurs the divide between workplace and home. Gender expectations have changed, too, with men's bodies increasingly exposed in the media and scrutinized in everyday interactions. In Buttoned Up, based on interviews with dozens of men in three U.S. cities with distinct local dress cultures—New York, San Francisco, and Cincinnati—Erynn Masi de Casanova asks what it means to wear the white collar now.Despite the expansion of men’s fashion and grooming practices, the decrease in formal dress codes, and the relaxing of traditional ideas about masculinity, white-collar men feel constrained in their choices about how to embody professionalism. They strategically embrace conformity in clothing as a way of maintaining their gender and class privilege. Across categories of race, sexual orientation and occupation, men talk about "blending in" and "looking the part" as they aim to keep their jobs or pursue better ones. These white-collar workers’ accounts show that greater freedom in work dress codes can, ironically, increase men’s anxiety about getting it wrong and discourage them from experimenting with their dress and appearance.







Dress Code


Book Description

As Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months.” And yet it serves to make us beautiful, or at least make us feel beautiful. In this book, Mari Grinde Arntzen asks how and why this is—how can fashion simultaneously attract us to its glamour and repel us with its superficiality and how being called “fashionable” can be at once a compliment and an insult. Arntzen guides us through the major figures and brands of today’s fashion industry, showing how they shape us and in turn why we love to be shaped by them. She examines both everyday, affordable “fast fashion” brands, as well as the luxury market, to show how fashion commands a powerful influence on every socioeconomic level of our society. Stepping into our closets with us, she thinks about what happens when we get dressed: why fashion can make us feel powerful, beautiful, and original at the same time that it forces us into conformity. Stripping off the layers of the world’s fifth largest industry, garment by garment, she holds fashion up as a phenomenon, business, and art, exploring the questions it forces us to ask about the body, image, celebrity, and self-obsession. Ultimately, Arntzen asks the most direct question: what is fashion? How has it taken such a powerful hold on the world, forever propelling us toward its concepts of beauty?




Social Psychology of Dress


Book Description

Social Psychology of Dress presents and explains the major theories and concepts that are important to understanding relationships between dress and human behavior. These concepts and theories are derived from such disciplines as sociology, psychology, anthropology, communication, and textiles and clothing. Information presented will provide summaries of empirical research, as well as examples from current events or popular culture. The book provides a broad-based and inclusive discussion of the social psychology of dress, including: - The study of dress and how to do it - Cultural topics such as cultural patterns including technology, cultural complexity, normative order, aesthetics, hygiene, ethnicity, ritual - Societal topics such as family, economy-occupation, social organizations and sports, fraternal organizations - Individual-focused theories on deviance, personality variables, self, values, body image and social cognition - Coverage of key theories related to dress and identity provide a strong theoretical foundation for further research Unique chapter features bring in industry application and current events. The end-of-chapter summaries, discussion questions and activities give students opportunities to study and research dress. Teaching resources including an instructor's guide, test bank and PowerPoint presentations with full-color versions of images from the textbook. Social Psychology of Dress STUDIO - Study smarter with self-quizzes featuring scored results and personalized study tips - Review concepts with flashcards of essential vocabulary - Download worksheets to complete chapter activities




Dress, Law and Naked Truth


Book Description

Why are civil authorities in so-called liberal democracies affronted by public nudity and the Islamic full-face 'veil'? Why is law and civil order so closely associated with robes, gowns, suits, wigs and uniforms? Why is law so concerned with the 'evident' and the need for justice to be 'seen' to be done? Why do we dress and obey dress codes at all? In this, the first ever study devoted to the many deep cultural connections between dress and law, the author addresses these questions and more. His responses flow from the radical thesis that 'law is dress and dress is law'. Engaging with sources from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare, Carlyle, Dickens and Damien Hirst, Professor Watt draws a revealing history of dress and civil order and offers challenging conclusions about the nature of truth and the potential for individuals to fit within the forms of civil life.







Fashion & Luxury Marketing


Book Description

Written by marketing experts, this authoritative and comprehensive full-colour textbook made up of both accessible research and theory, real-world examples and case studies including Prada, Gucci and Burberry, provides students with an overview of the global fashion industry and fashion marketing, strategy, branding, communications, retailing and distribution, as well as the psychological factors involved in consuming fashion and luxury. The role of social media, celebrities and influencers such as Kim Kardashian and Lil Miquela are discussed, as is the ever-increasing role of ethical fashion and sustainability. The authors also offer an expanded view of fashion and luxury by moving beyond just clothing and apparel to include other fashionable and luxurious products and services, including technology. Packed with attractive visuals from fashion and culture, and accompanied by chapter summaries, questions and exercises, this textbook is essential reading for students studying fashion, luxury, marketing, management, retailing, branding and communications. Also provided for educators are supporting PowerPoint slides and an instructor’s manual to support use of the textbook with students. Suitable for Fashion Marketing/Fashion Consumer Behaviour modules as well as a general text for Fashion Marketing programmes. The text will also appeal to Luxury programmes (MBA etc) and Retail Marketing modules (UG).