The Culture of Fashion

This illustrated survey of 600 years of fashion investigates its cultural and social meanings from medieval Europe to 20th-century America. It provides a guide to the changes in style and taste, and challenges existing fashion histories, showing that clothes have always played a pivotal role in defining a sense of identity and society, especially when concerned with sexual and body politics. With a chronological structure, each chapter focuses on both male and female fashion of a specific period, covering its fascinating developments. It discusses: andrognous dressing; body piercing; fabrics, clothing and the rise of city life; dress, and the changing shape of the human body; controversies surrounding trousers and leg wear for both men and women; exposure of flesh; fashion and social status; and the dissemination of fashion through travel, film, magazines and catwalk shows.

ISBN 0719041252   Volumes 1 ISBN13 9780719041259 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 658 Publisher Manchester University Press   Published in Manchester Imprint Manchester University Press   Series editor Breward, Christopher Format Paperback   Series ISSN 0001 Publication date 02 Mar 1995   Series title Studies in Design & Material Culture Library of Congress GT511.B74   Height (mm) 258 DEWEY 391.009   Width (mm) 170 DEWEY edition DC20   Spine width (mm) 18 Pages 304   Academic level General, Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		List of illustrations
		Acknowledgements
		General editor's foreword
		Introduction		1
1		Medieval period: fashioning the body		7
2		Renaissance: the rhetoric of power		41
3		Seventeenth century: clothing and crisis		75
4		Eighteenth century: clothing and commerce		109
5		Nineteenth century: fashion and modernity		145
6		Early twentieth century: clothing the masses		181
7		Late twentieth century: catwalk and street style		225
		Select bibliography		237
		Index		242

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