Shoes are an integral part of Jewish material culture. Although they appear in some of the most foundational biblical stories, they are generally regarded as no more than lowly, albeit essential, accessories.

"Jews and Shoes" takes a fresh look at the makings and meanings of shoes, cobblers, and barefootedness in Jewish experience. The book shows how shoes convey theological, social, and economic concepts, and as such are intriguing subjects for inquiry within a wide range of cultural, artistic, and historic contexts.The book's multidisciplinary approach encompasses a wide range of contributions from disciplines as diverse as fashion, visual culture, history, anthropology, Bible and Talmud, and performance studies. "Jews and Shoes" will appeal to students, scholars and general readers alike who are interested to find out more about the practical and symbolic significance of shoes in Jewish culture since antiquity.

Through analyzing dress in detective fiction, Fear and Clothing reveals a cultural history of identity affected by the social upheaval caused by war. In-depth analysis of interwar publications by a comprehensive range of writers reveals readers' anxieties and fears about class, gender and race and how these changed over the period. Although read and written by both men and women, detective fiction was deemed at the time to be a masculine and high-status entertainment. However the literature demonstrates an admiration and acceptance of the woman's identity, performed during the Great War and continuing throughout the interwar period, as girl pal and female gentleman. In chapters that explore age, character, class, masculinity, performative womanhood and race, Jane Custance Baker exposes how dress was a status marker to both male and female readers, made anxious by social change brought about by war. Dress in detective fiction reveals a set of signs to be read, digested, and possibly employed to model the individual reader's personal dress choices. Fear and Clothing sheds new light on dress of the period, the social and cultural environment as depicted in the popular fiction genre in the early 20th century, and is of interest to researchers and scholars within dress history, literary and historical studies.

Across the eighteenth century in Britain, readers, writers, and theater-goers were fascinated by women who dressed in men's clothing from actresses on stage who showed their shapely legs to advantage in men's breeches to stories of valiant female soldiers and ruthless female pirates. Spanning genres from plays, novels, and poetry to pamphlets and broadsides, the cross-dressing woman came to signal more than female independence or unconventional behaviors; she also came to signal an investment in female same-sex intimacies and sapphic desires. Sapphic Crossings reveals how various British texts from the period associate female cross-dressing with the exciting possibility of intimate, embodied same-sex relationships. Ula Lukszo Klein reconsiders the role of lesbian desires and their structuring through cross-gender embodiments as crucial not only to the history of sexuality but to the rise of modern concepts of gender, sexuality, and desire. She prompts readers to rethink the roots of lesbianism and transgender identities today and introduces new ways of thinking about embodied sexuality in the past.

What do our clothes say about who we are or who we think we are? How does the way we dress communicate messages about our identity? Is the desire to be "in fashion" universal, or is it unique to Western culture? How do fashions change? These are just a few of the intriguing questions Fred Davis sets out to answer in this provocative look at what we do with our clothes--and what they can do to us.
Much of what we assume to be individual preference, Davis shows, really reflects deeper social and cultural forces. Ours is an ambivalent social world, characterized by tensions over gender roles, social status, and the expression of sexuality. Predicting what people will wear becomes a risky gamble when the link between private self and public persona can be so unstable.

The Late Middle Ages (c.1350 - 1500) provides us with many of our stock, childhood images of the 'Middle Ages': the knight in shining armour, the joust, lords and ladies dressed in rich, voluminous robes and elegant dresses. Yet it is a paradox, for at the start of the period, Europe had endured the worst pandemic of recorded history: the Black Death, the climate was rapidly cooling, causing massive crop failures and France and England were locked in the brutal, dynastic struggle of the Hundred Years War. Meanwhile, in the second half of the period, intrepid merchants became the new knighthood of Europe, seeking new wealth in Asia and Africa, and launching what has been called the 'Age of Discovery' while a new interest in Classical culture would give birth to the Renaissance. All of these elements have long intrigued and inspired writers, researchers and reenactors to take a trip through the looking glass to this lost world. In the Book of Historic Fashion: A Newcomer's Guide to Medieval Clothing (1300 - 1450), authors Allen and Mele provide a visual snap shot of the courtly elegance and common wear of the period. Filled with hundreds of sketches taken from original sources, mechanical drawings and detailed 'layer drawings' demonstrating how the clothing was worn, this entree both introduces the period and helps newcomers find their way forward in the study of primary and secondary sources. Whether you are a teacher or professor who wants your students to understand what the clothing of the day really looked like, a costume designers working in theater, TV and film looking for visual reference or just new to medieval reenacting who wants guidance on what to wear in order to be appropriately dressed at events, this volume is for you.

A cultural and historical philosophy of fashion in economic and social life from the 1830s to the present dayUlrich Lehmann brings together methods and ideas from social sciences and material production to offer a new political reading of fashion in today's post-democracy. Accessing rare source material across a wide range of European languages and cultures, he offers insight into new working structures in the manufacture of garments and textiles. Reinvigorates materialism as a critical approach to analysing economics, society and media through the thematic focus on fashion as the economically and culturally dominant sector within post-industrial societiesCase studies include the male suit in Alfred Hitchcock's film 'North by Northwest' (1959), the revolutionary production methods in the work of Carol Christian Poell and the innovative textile manufacture of Bonotto in Molvena, north-east ItalyRedirects fashion theory toward materiality and materialism from previous art-historical and social-anthropological approachesExposes the need critically to engage with fashion production, away from the exclusive reading of fashion through its media representationExtends the discussion of fashion production from aspects of labour conditions and sustainability to the materialist critique of the fashion system

In the decade since Writing for the Fashion Business was first published, the Internet and social media have upended the field of journalism and the fashion world, revolutionizing both industries and changing the very nature of storytelling. This second edition devotes significant space to digital content, with dedicated chapters covering online content, social media, and streaming video content. In addition to journalism, it also includes instruction on how to write for new promotional approaches emerging in the fashion world like influencer and experiential marketing, and introduces inclusion vocabulary to ensure non-discriminatory narratives. Whether in the form of an article, book, press release, email, or DM, students will gain an understanding of how written communication methods sync up with today's most common methods of commerce and communication. New to this Edition: -Trending Topic box features in each chapter discuss recent, real-life controversial situations within the fashion industry and invite students to share their ideas, concerns, and recommendations related to the situation -All new Industry Profiles in each chapter allow students to read first-hand accounts of what it's like to work in the sector of the fashion business that corresponds to the chapter topic -Chapter ending Review Questions and Learning Activities prompt students to test their knowledge STUDIO Features Include: -Review concepts with flashcards of essential vocabulary Instructor Resources -Instructor's Guide provides suggestions for planning the course and using the text in the classroom, supplemental assignments, and lecture notes

Over the past 40 years, Japanese designers have led the way in aligning fashion with art and ideology, as well as addressing identity and social politics through dress. They have demonstrated that both creative and commercial enterprise is possible in today's international fashion industry, and have refused to compromise their ideals, remaining autonomous and independent in their design, business affairs and distribution methods. The inspirational Miyake, Yamamoto and Kawakubo have gained worldwide respect and admiration and have influenced a generation of designers and artists alike. Based on twelve years of research, this book provides a richly detailed and uniquely comprehensive view of the work of these three key designers. It outlines their major contributions and the subsequent impact that their work has had upon the next generation of fashion and textile designers around the world. Designers discussed include: Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, Naoki Takizawa, Dai Fujiwara, Junya Watanabe, Tao Kurihara, Jun Takahashi, Yoshiki Hishinuma, Junichi Arai, Reiko Sudo & the Nuno Corporation, Makiko Minagawa, Hiroshi Matsushita, Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and Helmut Lang.

Survey of Historic Costume Coloring Book highlights Western dress from the ancient world to today through fashion silhouettes. By coloring line drawings that parallel chapters from the Survey of Historic Costume, Seventh Edition textbook, students will learn to identify and retain specific details that make each historical period's fashion unique. Each chapter also includes activities and prompts to promote further thinking and creativity, including features like Draw-It Boxes and Modern Connections Boxes. Through these dynamic, hands-on exercises, students will develop an understanding of historic costume, increase awareness of world culture, and have fun through this interactive learning medium. Features: -92 pieces of line art to color, adapted from images in Survey of Historic Costume -Modern Connections Boxes, Draw-It Boxes, Activity Boxes, and Global Connections Boxes provide additional exercises to apply knowledge of costume history and design -Image Captions and Cross References give additional historical context and allow images to be looked up in the companion textbook for further study

Caricatured for extravagance, vanity, glamorous celebrity and, all too often, embroiled in scandal and gossip, 18th-century London's fashionable society had a well-deserved reputation for frivolity. But to be fashionable in 1700s London meant more than simply being well dressed. Fashion denoted membership of a new type of society - the beau monde, a world where status was no longer determined by coronets and countryseats alone but by the more nebulous qualification of metropolitan 'fashion'. Conspicuous consumption and display were crucial; the right address, the right dinner guests, the right possessions, the right jewels, the right seat at the opera. The Beau Monde leads us on a tour of this exciting new world, from court and parliament to London's parks, pleasure grounds, and private homes. From brash displays of diamond jewellery to the subtle complexities of political intrigue, we see how membership of the new elite was won, maintained - and sometimes lost. On the way, we meet a rich and colourful cast of characters, from the newly ennobled peer learning the ropes and the imposter trying to gain entry by means of clever fakery, to the exile banned for sexual indiscretion. Above all, as the story unfolds, we learn that being a Fashionable was about far more than simply being 'modish'. By the end of the century, it had become nothing less than the key to power and exclusivity in a changed world.

In this surprising new look at how clothing, style, and commerce came together to change American culture, Jennifer Le Zotte examines how secondhand goods sold at thrift stores, flea markets, and garage sales came to be both profitable and culturally influential. Initially, selling used goods in the United States was seen as a questionable enterprise focused largely on the poor. But as the twentieth century progressed, multimillion-dollar businesses like Goodwill Industries developed, catering not only to the needy but increasingly to well-off customers looking to make a statement. Le Zotte traces the origins and meanings of ""secondhand style"" and explores how buying pre-owned goods went from a signifier of poverty to a declaration of rebellion. Considering buyers and sellers from across the political and economic spectrum, Le Zotte shows how conservative and progressive social activists--from religious and business leaders to anti-Vietnam protesters and drag queens--shrewdly used the exchange of secondhand goods for economic and political ends. At the same time, artists and performers, from Marcel Duchamp and Fanny Brice to Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain, all helped make secondhand style a visual marker for youth in revolt.

Over the past decade, tattoos have become one of the most popular forms of visual culture in the world. TTT: Tattoo is a survey of over 300 of the best international tattooers working today, including Duncan X, Tomas Tomas, Scott Campbell, the Leu family and Stephanie Tamez. Exploring the connections between tattoo culture today and seminal figures and developments in the recent past, the book examines how the historical styles of this most enduring art form blend into new ones.

Color speaks a powerful cultural language, conveying political, sexual, and economic messages that, throughout history, have revealed how we relate to ourselves and our world. This ground-breaking compilation is the first to investigate how color in fashionable and ceremonial dress has played a significant social role, indicating acceptance and exclusion, convention and subversion. From the use of white in pioneering feminism to the penchant for black in post-war France, and from mystical scarlet broadcloth to the horrors of arsenic-laden green fashion, this publication demonstrates that color in dress is never straightforward. Divided into four parts - solidarity, power, innovation, and desire - each section highlights the often violent, emotional histories of color in dress across geographical, temporal and cultural boundaries. Underlying today's relaxed attitude to color lies a chromatic complexity that speaks of wars, migrations and economics. Bringing together cutting-edge chapters from leading scholars, it is essential reading for students of fashion, textiles, design, cultural studies and art history.

Learn how to make ethical decisions on a daily basis. This second edition of Ethics in the Fashion Industry continues to document the relationships between functions in the fashion industry and the people who make these functions happen. Covering topics such as corporate social responsibility, social media, social compliance audits, diversity, and human rights, this book empowers students who will soon become fashion professionals to make good decisions. Whether debating issues like factory conditions, fair wages, fast fashions, or designer knock-offs, shoplifting, and controversial advertising, Ethics in the Fashion Industry gives you the tools to do the right thing. New to this Edition: Box Features: In each chapter you will find three key boxes that call your attention to current ethical practices. Ethics in the Industry highlights relevant industry practices relating to ethics; Ethics in the News analyzes recent reporting on ethics; and Ethics in Practice profiles present industry professionals' and fashion scholars' work in the context of the chapter's topic. Case Studies: Each chapter ends with two Case Studies that facilitate exploration of current and relevant industry activities into the knowledge-building process, allowing students to think critically on scenarios that may present themselves in the course of their careers. New Insights: The responsibility that millennials, Gen Xers, and Gen Nexters have in positioning not only the fashion industry, but the planet itself, for a healthy future cannot go unobserved. This second edition includes new insights about generational behaviors and perspectives in making ethical decisions, in addition to the role that consumers play in shaping fashion industry decisions. Ethics in the Fashion Industry STUDIO Study smarter with self-quizzes featuring scored results and personalized study tips Review concepts with flashcards of essential vocabulary

The Great Han is an ethnographic study of the Han Clothing movement (Hanfu yundong), a neo-traditionalist and majority racial nationalist movement that has emerged in China since 2001. Participants come together both online and in person in cities across China to revitalize their utopian vision of the authentic "Great Han" and corresponding "real China" through pseudo-traditional ethnic dress, reinvented Confucian ritual, and anti-foreign sentiment. Employing close analysis of movement ideas and practices, this book finds that the movement's "real China," envisioning a pure, perfectly ordered, ethnically homogeneous, and secure society, is in fact an imaginary vision constructed in response to the challenging realities of the present. Yet this national imaginary is reproduced precisely through its own perpetual elusiveness. The Great Han is a pioneering analysis of Han identity, nationalism, and social movements in a rapidly changing China.

Dress is everywhere imbued with symbols that reflect different meanings in different contexts. This compelling book convincingly demonstrates how clothing is analogous to a working language and is similarly underpinned by deeper meanings and philosophies.From tattoos and mini-skirts, to skin decoration, makeup and hair, Calefato unpicks the multiple functions of modern dress. Exploring intriguing commonalities - for example, between tattooed Egyptian mummies of 2000 BC and modern subcultural styles - Calefato considers the psychological, cultural, spiritual and symbolic significances at play in what she aptly labels 'body cartography'. What we wear is a vehicle for the (often contentious) expression of politics, gender and identity, placing clothing at the root of a complex set of messages, many of which are paradoxical. Clothing may, for example, liberate through the pleasures of masquerade and at the same time 'cage' or control the body. The Clothed Body shows how semiotics can provide a convincing template for understanding dress in a wide range of contexts and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of what we wear.

Form-fitting dresses, silk veils, earrings, furs, high-heeled shoes, make up, and dyed, flowing hair. It is difficult for a contemporary person to reconcile these elegant clothes and accessories with the image of cloistered nuns. For many of the some thousand nuns in early modern Venice, however, these fashions were the norm.
Often locked in convents without any religious calling--simply to save their parents the expense of their dowry--these involuntary nuns relied on the symbolic meaning of secular clothes, fabrics, and colors to rebel against the rules and prescriptions of conventual life and to define roles and social status inside monastic society.
Calling upon mountains of archival documents, most of which have never been seen in print, "Forbidden Fashions" is the first book to focus specifically upon the dress of nuns in Venetian convents and offers new perspective on the intersection of dress and the city's social and economic history.

When crinolines, bustles and ostrich feathers were the height of colonial fashion. This richly illustrated and lively social history explores the creation, consumption and spectacle of fashionable dress in Aotearoa New Zealand from 1840 to the early 1900s. Dressmakers were essential contributors to the development of New Zealand, and as a colonial outpost of the British Empire, New Zealands 19th century dress culture was heavily shaped by international trends. Interactions with Maori, the demands of settler lifestyle and the countrys geography all added another layer. Dressed teems with the fascinating, busy lives of early businesswomen, society women and civic figures. Featuring dresses and fashionable accessories from museums throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, and including over 270 images, this major book makes a significant contribution to histories of colonial dress.

"The entire town is disguised," declared a French tourist of eighteenth-century Venice. And, indeed, maskers of all ranks--nobles, clergy, imposters, seducers, con men--could be found mixing at every level of Venetian society. Even a pious nun donned a mask and male attire for her liaison with the libertine Casanova. In Venice Incognito, James H. Johnson offers a spirited analysis of masking in this carnival-loving city. He draws on a wealth of material to explore the world view of maskers, both during and outside of carnival, and reconstructs their logic: covering the face in public was a uniquely Venetian response to one of the most rigid class hierarchies in European history. This vivid account goes beyond common views that masking was about forgetting the past and minding the muse of pleasure to offer fresh insight into the historical construction of identity.

Bowlers, Bergeres, berets and beyond, this is the ultimate guide to hats through history. From the lavish fashion hats of Marie Antoinette's court to the experimental millinery of Stephen Jones and Philip Treacy, Hats takes us on a beautifully illustrated journey through class conflict, gendered etiquette and national allegiances to reveal the complex cultures from which each style emerged. Unlike any other element of dress, hats are able to confer a certain presence on the wearer, whilst working to a seemingly arcane system of codes that govern our behaviour. At which occasion is it appropriate to wear a hat? When is it respectful to take hats off? Why did hats fall out of favour? Structured thematically with issues such as power and disguise, Clair Hughes explores both historical and contemporary styles, as well as their depictions in art, literature and film, with sharp historical insights and playful narratives. Including head-turning designs at world-famous horse races, the hat habits of royal family members, literary mad hatters and French high-fashion millinery by the likes of Poiret, Vionnet and Chanel, this is the authoritative guide to one of the most culturally rich accessories in fashion. Hats is the first title in the Elements of Dress Series, edited by Susan Vincent.

What if fashion was a state? What kind of state would it be? Probably not a democracy. Otto von Busch sees fashion as a totalitarian state, with a population all too eager to enact the decrees of its aesthetic superiority. Peers police each other and deploy acts of judgment, peer-regulation, and micro-violence to uphold the aesthetic order of fashion supremacy. Using four design projects as tools for inquiry, Von Busch explores the seductive desires of envy and violence within fashion drawing on political theories. He proposes that the violent conflicts of fashion happen not only in arid cotton fields or collapsing factories, but in the everyday practice of getting dressed, in the judgments, sneers, and rejections of others. Indeed, he suggests that feelings of inclusion and adoration are what make us feel the pleasure of being fashionable-of being seductive, popular, and powerful. Exploring the conflicting emotions associated with fashion, Von Busch argues that while the current state of fashion is bred out of fear, The Psychopolitics of Fashion can offer constructive modes of mitigation and resistance. Through projects that actively work towards disarming the violent practices of dress, Von Busch suggests paths towards a more engaging and meaningful experience of fashion he calls "deep fashion."

The most colorful and complete book published on the most enduring souvenir ever invented: the Hawaiian shirt. Beautifully illustrated with hundreds of images, this book recounts the colorful stories behind these marvelous shirts: as cultural icons, evocative of the mystery and the allure of the islands, capturing the vibe of the watermen culture and lifestyle -- casual, relaxed, and fun. Valued by professional collectors and by millions of vacationers and fashionistos, these shirts are enjoying a fashion revival. Drawing from hundreds of interviews, newspaper and magazine archives, and personal memorabilia, the author evokes the world of the designers, seamstresses, manufacturers, and retailers who created the industry and nurtured it from its single-sewing-machine-shop beginnings to an enterprise of international scope and importance and its revival today. The Aloha Shirt is both a dazzling, fun-to-browse art book, and a fascinating chronicle of the world's love affair with Hawaii.

On any given day nearly half the world's population is wearing blue jeans. This is entirely extraordinary. Yet there has never been a serious attempt to understand the causes, nature and consequences of denim as "the" global garment of our world. This book takes up that challenge with gusto. It gives clear, if surprising, explanations for why this is the case; challenging the accepted history of jeans and showing why the reasons cannot be commercial. While discussing the consequences of denim at the global level, the book consists of some exemplary studies by anthropologists of what blue jeans mean in a variety of local situations. These range from the discussion of hip-hop jeans in Germany, denim and sex in Milan through to the connection between denim and recycling in the US. But through all these intensively researched ethnographies of local denim we build our understanding of the most curious of all features of blue jeans -- the rise of global denim.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Hair, a primary marker of our mammalian nature, is an extraordinary indicator of economic and social standing, political orientation, religious affiliation, marital status, and cultural leanings, among other things. The meanings of hair are deep, powerful, and so strongly embedded in cultural conditioning that they are usually understood unconsciously (and all the more strongly for that). In untangling its myriad meanings, Scott Lowe reveals just how little we control our hair, no matter the style: each and every passer-by decides on its significance anew. From Hittites to hippies and Pentecostals to porn stars, Hair combs through a ubiquitous personal yet public object, a charged and carefully managed dead thing. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.