Dress and Popular Culture


Book Description

The subjects of the essays in this book range from looking at the ever changing means of specific garments and clothing practices of subcultural groups to examining dress as a reflection of changing life styles in American culture. The essays also examine fashions, fads, and popular images. Dress and Popular Culture hopes to shed new light on popular culture through a study of the associations of dress to culture.




A Companion to Popular Culture


Book Description

A Companion to Popular Culture is a landmark survey of contemporary research in popular culture studies that offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the field. Includes over two dozen essays covering the spectrum of popular culture studies from food to folklore and from TV to technology Features contributions from established and up-and-coming scholars from a range of disciplines Offers a detailed history of the study of popular culture Balances new perspectives on the politics of culture with in-depth analysis of topics at the forefront of popular culture studies




Dress in American Culture


Book Description

Clothing is viewed as a mediating factor in the American experience. The authors of these essays reveal the politics, or power of dress, especially in its function as a symbol of American ideals, and examine changes in clothing behavior which occurred as Americans faced a variety of new experiences.




Stripping, Sex, and Popular Culture


Book Description

Moving from first hand interviews with dancers and others, this book broadens into an accessible examination of the popularity of "striptease culture," with sex-saturated media imagery, and stripper aerobics at your local gym. It aims to scrutinize the truth of a industry whose norms are increasingly at the center of contemporary society.




The Culture of Fashion


Book Description

This illustrated survey of 600 years of fashion investigates its cultural and social meaning from medieval Europe to twentieth-century America. Breward's work provides the reader with a clear guide to the changes in style and taste and shows that clothes have always played a pivotal role in defining a sense of identity and society, especially when concerned with sexual and body politics.




Everything Bad is Good for You


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Farsighted Forget everything you’ve ever read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, unfailingly intelligent, thoroughly researched, and surprisingly convincing big idea book, Steven Johnson draws from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and media theory to argue that the pop culture we soak in every day—from Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons—has been growing more sophisticated with each passing year, and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are actually making our minds measurably sharper. After reading Everything Bad is Good for You, you will never regard the glow of the video game or television screen the same way again. With a new afterword by the author.




Dressed in Dreams


Book Description

One of Essence's "10 Books We're Dying To Toss Into Our Summer Totes" From sneakers to leather jackets, a bold, witty, and deeply personal dive into Black America's closet In this highly engaging book, fashionista and pop culture expert Tanisha C. Ford investigates Afros and dashikis, go-go boots and hotpants of the sixties, hip hop's baggy jeans and bamboo earrings, and the #BlackLivesMatter-inspired hoodies of today. The history of these garments is deeply intertwined with Ford’s story as a black girl coming of age in a Midwestern rust belt city. She experimented with the Jheri curl; discovered how wearing the wrong color tennis shoes at the roller rink during the drug and gang wars of the 1980s could get you beaten; and rocked oversized, brightly colored jeans and Timberlands at an elite boarding school where the white upper crust wore conservative wool shift dresses. Dressed in Dreams is a story of desire, access, conformity, and black innovation that explains things like the importance of knockoff culture; the role of “ghetto fabulous” full-length furs and colorful leather in the 1990s; how black girls make magic out of a dollar store t-shirt, rhinestones, and airbrushed paint; and black parents' emphasis on dressing nice. Ford talks about the pain of seeing black style appropriated by the mainstream fashion industry and fashion’s power, especially in middle America. In this richly evocative narrative, she shares her lifelong fashion revolution—from figuring out her own personal style to discovering what makes Midwestern fashion a real thing too.




Fashion Victims


Book Description

A thoughtful, lavishly illustrated, and highly readable account of the fabulous French fashion world in the pre-Revolutionary period This engrossing book chronicles one of the most exciting, controversial, and extravagant periods in the history of fashion: the reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in 18th-century France. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell offers a carefully researched glimpse into the turbulent era's sophisticated and largely female-dominated fashion industry, which produced courtly finery as well as promoted a thriving secondhand clothing market outside the royal circle. She discusses in depth the exceptionally imaginative and uninhibited styles of the period immediately before the French Revolution, and also explores fashion's surprising influence on the course of the Revolution itself. The absorbing narrative demonstrates fashion's crucial role as a visible and versatile medium for social commentary, and shows the glittering surface of 18th-century high society as well as its seedy underbelly. Fashion Victims presents a compelling anthology of trends, manners, and personalities from the era, accompanied by gorgeous fashion plates, portraits, and photographs of rare surviving garments. Drawing upon documentary evidence, previously unpublished archival sources, and new information about aristocrats, politicians, and celebrities, this book is an unmatched study of French fashion in the late 18th century, providing astonishing insight, a gripping story, and stylish inspiration.




Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion


Book Description

An interdisciplinary collection illuminating how fashion shaped concepts and practices of femininity and modernity




Fashion and Cultural Studies


Book Description

Bridging theory and practice, this accessible text considers fashion from both cultural studies and fashion studies perspectives, and addresses the growing interaction between the two fields. Kaiser and Green use a wide range of cross-cultural case studies to explore how race, ethnicity, class, gender and other identities intersect and are produced through embodied fashion. Drawing on intersectionality in feminist theory and cultural studies, Fashion and Cultural Studies is essential reading for students and scholars. This revised edition includes updated case studies and two new chapters. The first new chapter explores religion, spirituality, and faith in relation to style, fashion, and dress. The second offers a critique of “beauty” and considers dressed embodiment inclusive of diverse sizes, shapes and dis/abilities. Throughout the text, Kaiser and Green use a range of examples to interrogate the complex entanglements of production, regulation, distribution, consumption, and subject formation within and through fashion.