Establishing Dress History


Book Description

'Establishing Dress History' will appeal not only to students and academics bt all those those with an interest in the history of dress and fashion. The title fuses together two areas of current academic interest, dress design and history, and current museum studies approaches.




The Study of Dress History


Book Description

Over the past ten years the study of dress history has finally broken free of the shackles that have held it back, and is now benefiting from new, multidisciplinary approaches and practices, which draw on material culture, art history, ethnography, and cultural studies. This book focuses on the development of these new methods to be found within the field of dress history and dress studies, and assesses the current condition and future directions of the subject.




Dress Codes


Book Description

A law professor and cultural critic offers an eye-opening exploration of the laws of fashion throughout history, from the middle ages to the present day, examining the canons, mores and customs of clothing rules that we often take for granted




Creating the Illusion


Book Description

Marilyn Monroe made history by standing over a subway grating in a white pleated halter dress designed by William Travilla. Hubert de Givenchy immortalized the Little Black Dress with a single opening scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's. A red nylon jacket signaled to audiences that James Dean was a Rebel Without a Cause. For more than a century, costume designers have left indelible impressions on moviegoers' minds. Yet until now, so little has been known about the designers themselves and their work to complement and enrich stories through fashion. Creating the Illusion presents the history of fashion on film, showcasing not only classic moments from film favorites, but a host of untold stories about the creative talent working behind the scenes to dress the stars from the silent era to the present day. Among the book's sixty-five designer profiles are Clare West, Howard Greer, Adrian, Walter Plunkett, Travis Banton, Irene, Edith Head, Cecil Beaton, Bob Mackie, and Colleen Atwood. The designers' stories are set against the backdrop of Hollywood: how they collaborated with great movie stars and filmmakers; how they maneuvered within the studio system; and how they came to design clothing that remains iconic decades after its first appearance. The array of films discussed and showcased through photos spans more than one hundred years, from draping Rudolph Valentino in exotic "sheik" dress to the legendary costuming of Gone with the Wind, Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Bonnie and Clyde, Reservoir Dogs, and beyond. This gloriously illustrated volume includes candid photos of the designers at work, portraits and wardrobe tests of stars in costume, and designer sketches. Drawing from archival material and dozens of new interviews with award-winning designers, authors Jay Jorgensen and Donald L. Scoggins offer a highly informative, lavish, and entertaining history of Hollywood costume design. About TCM: Turner Classic Movies is the definitive resource for the greatest movies of all time. It engages, entertains, and enlightens to show how the entire spectrum of classic movies, movie history, and movie-making touches us all and influences how we think and live today.




Dress Casual


Book Description

Dress Casual: How College Students Redefined American Style




Dress History


Book Description

The field of dress history has experienced exponential growth over the past two decades. This in-depth investigation examines the expanding borders and porous boundaries of the discipline today, outlining key debates and showcasing the most exciting research. With international case studies from a wide range of scholars, the volume encompasses work from a variety of historical periods from the late 18th century to the present day. Contributors examine, critique and expand the methodologies and sources used in fashion history, analyse how dress is collected, displayed and sold, and investigate clothing's meanings and uses in the practice of identity. Exploring overlooked territories and new approaches to analysis, the book offers students and scholars a fresh appraisal of dress history in the 21st century.




The Lost Art of Dress


Book Description

"A tribute to a time when style -- and maybe even life -- felt more straightforward, and however arbitrary, there were definitive answers." -- Sadie Stein, Paris Review As a glance down any street in America quickly reveals, American women have forgotten how to dress. We lack the fashion know-how we need to dress professionally and beautifully. In The Lost Art of Dress, historian and dressmaker Linda Przybyszewski reveals that this wasn't always true. In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable group of women -- the so-called Dress Doctors -- taught American women that knowledge, not money, was key to a beautiful wardrobe. They empowered women to design, make, and choose clothing for both the workplace and the home. Armed with the Dress Doctors' simple design principles -- harmony, proportion, balance, rhythm, emphasis -- modern American women from all classes learned to dress for all occasions in ways that made them confident, engaged members of society. A captivating and beautifully illustrated look at the world of the Dress Doctors, The Lost Art of Dress introduces a new audience to their timeless rules of fashion and beauty -- rules which, with a little help, we can certainly learn again.




Creating African Fashion Histories


Book Description

Creating African Fashion Histories examines the stark disjuncture between African self-fashioning and museum practices. Conventionally, African clothing, textiles, and body adornments were classified by museums as examples of trade goods, art, and ethnographic materials—never as "fashion." Counterposing the dynamism of African fashion with museums' historic holdings thus provides a unique way of confronting ways in which coloniality persists in knowledge and institutions today. This volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and curators to debate sources and approaches for constructing African fashion histories and to examine their potential for decolonizing museums, fashion studies, and global cultural history. The editors of this volume seek to answer questions such as: How can researchers use museum collections to reveal traces of past self-fashioning that are obscured by racialized forms of knowledge and institutional practice? How can archival, visual, oral, ethnographic, and online sources be deployed to capture the diversity of African sartorial pasts? How can scholars and curators decolonize the Eurocentric frames of thinking encapsulated in historic collections and current curricula? Can new collections of African fashion decolonize museum practice? From Moroccan fashion bloggers to upmarket Lagos designers, the voices in this ground-breaking collection reveal fascinating histories and geographies of circulation within and beyond the continent and its diasporic communities.




The Routledge History of Fashion and Dress, 1800 to the Present


Book Description

The time span covered by The Routledge History of Fashion and Dress starts in the nineteenth century, with the aftermath of the consumers’ revolution, and reaches all the way to the present. The fashion and garment industries have been international from the beginning and, as such, this volume looks at the history of fashion and dress through the lenses of both international and global history. Because fashion is also a multifaceted subject with humanagency at its core, at the confluence of thematerial (fabrics, clothing, dyes, tools, and machines) and the immaterial (savoir-faire, identities, images, and brands), this volume adopts a transdisciplinary perspective, opening its pages to researchers from a variety of complementary fields. The chapters in this volume are organized based on their relationship to five fields of study: economics and commerce, politics, business, identities, and historical sources. Paying particular attention to change, the book goes beyond the great fashion capitals and well-known fashion centers and points to the broader geographies of fashion. Particular geographical areas focus on the emergence of new fashion systems and business models, whether they be in Sweden, Bangladesh, or Spain, or on the African continent, considered to be the “new frontier” of the industry. Covering myriad aspects of the subject this is the perfect companion for all those interested in history of dress and fashion in the modern world.




Dress Your Best


Book Description

The 8 million fans of TLC’s hottest show, What Not to Wear, know it as the place to go for real-life fashion advice. Now the show’s hosts, Clinton Kelly and Stacy London, offer spot-on fashion wisdom—with an attitude—in this fully illustrated, authoritative, and irreverent fashion guide to dressing your best for every occasion. Clinton and Stacy’s surefire method for boosting appearance rests on their belief that we can all win admiring glances by selecting clothes that play up our positives and create a balanced body shape. In Dress Your Best, Clinton and Stacy match a wide range of female and male body types with the perfect work, casual, and evening attire, showing you exactly how to make your best parts “work” for you. Dressing tips for 26 body types! Features 18 women and 8 men: bigger on top, bigger on bottom, a little extra in the middle, not curvy, extra curvy, small-framed, athletic, and more! Whether you’re searching for a way to accentuate your assets, puzzling over the right print pattern for your frame, or just looking for a solution to the dilemma “What do I need to wear to look fabulous?” you’ll find here the universal tips, dos and don’ts, seasonal alternatives, and must-haves that will deliver the answers. Dress Your Best is certain to become the standard by which all other fashion guides are measured.