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.

In the shops of London's Oxford Street, girls wear patterned scarves over their hair as they cluster around makeup counters. Alongside them, hip twenty-somethings style their head-wraps in high black topknots to match their black boot-cut trousers. Participating in the world of popular mainstream fashion-often thought to be the domain of the West-these young Muslim women are part of an emergent cross-faith transnational youth subculture of modest fashion. In treating hijab and other forms of modest clothing as fashion, Reina Lewis counters the overuse of images of veiled women as "evidence" in the prevalent suggestion that Muslims and Islam are incompatible with Western modernity. Muslim Fashion contextualizes modest wardrobe styling within Islamic and global consumer cultures, interviewing key players including designers, bloggers, shoppers, store clerks, and shop owners. Focusing on Britain, North America, and Turkey, Lewis provides insights into the ways young Muslim women use multiple fashion systems to negotiate religion, identity, and ethnicity.

"Cool Shades" provides the first in-depth exploration of the enduring appeal of sunglasses in visual culture, both historically and today. Ubiquitous in fashion, advertising, film and graphic design, sunglasses are the ultimate signifier of 'cool' in mass culture; a powerful attribute pervading much fashion and pop cultural imagery which has received little scholarly attention until now.Accessible and highly engaging, this book offers an original history of how sunglasses became a fashion accessory in the early twentieth century, and addresses the complex variety of meanings they have the power to articulate, through associations with vision, light, glamour, darkness, fashion, speed and technology in the context of modernity."Cool Shades" will be of great interest to students of fashion, design, visual and material culture, cultural studies and sociology, as well as general readers fascinated by this iconic fashion staple.

"Fashion on Television" provides a comprehensive critical examination of the intersection between fashion, television and celebrity culture. The book brings together theoretical approaches to the symbolic force of television and fashion-forward programming on a global scale.Examining case studies such as Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, Ugly Betty and Mad Men, the book examines how TV has made style icons out of leading actresses and fashion-conscious consumers out of audiences. Using a varied methodology, including textual and contextual analysis, this study explores the cultural uses of onscreen fashion at the level of industry, text and intertext."Fashion on Television" is essential reading for those seeking to understand the cultural function of costume in a television context. Written accessibly with a multi-disciplinary approach, it will appeal to students and scholars from film and media, fashion and cultural studies, to sociology and women's studies.

This anthology written by an international group of anthropologists with hands-on experience from India and its multi-faceted fashion industry explores the underlying dynamics of spectacular capitalism. The authors present a range of intriguing case studies that open up the potential for critique of the local as much as global system that reproduces hierarchies and inequalities, while providing us a window into contemporary urban India. The opulent, delicate and handcrafted Indian fashion pieces resemble the white lotus, Indias national flower. The lotus too, with its beauty, grows out of the mud, mud that remains invisible and hidden. What have the contemporary Indian spectacular fashion shows in common with the Western nineteenth century department store fantasy palaces, the royal durbars, the elaborate museum displays of the colonial era and the lives of erstwhile Indian royals? What can the Delhi International Airport reveal about the current obsession of Indians with Indianness, the local and the refashioning of India for the global audience? How does the 'royal chic' -- the current trend in luxury Indian haute couture that recreates the splendour of the aristocratic lifestyles of the bygone era -- depend on poverty for its visual and material existence? Why does the Indian government invest in the Northeast Indian fashion scene and into the production of ethnic glamour and tribal chic? How do the glamour seeking Kerala Muslim women appropriate the sexy Bollywood fashions while still retaining their codes of modesty? How do the world of Delhi and its fashion designers look from the perspective of the village craftswomen that work for them, mock them and laugh at them and their hectic life? What is the science and artisanship behind the production of traditional Kolhapuri sandals, turned into luxury items for the international consumer? Finally, how do Bollywood cinema and the changing male fashion and body ideals reflect the transforming India? This anthology, written by an international group of anthropologists with hands-on experience from India and its multi-faceted fashion industry, explores the underlying dynamics of spectacular capitalism. The authors present a range of intriguing case studies that open up the potential for critique of the local as much as global system that reproduces hierarchies and inequalities, while providing us a window into contemporary urban India.

Through a highly original and detailed analysis of the memoirs, interviews and other life writings of Poiret, Dior and Schiaparelli, this book explores changing notions of femininity in the early decades of the 20th century, when the democratization of fashion began.
Examining idea of modernity, eternity and the ephemeral in the writings of these haute couturiers, the book reflects on fashion's ambivalent approach to women, which both celebrated and vilified them, presenting them as both ultra modern style leaders and irrational creatures stuck in the past.
This fascinating text is key reading for scholars and students of fashion, gender studies, cultural studies and history.

Luxury has been both celebrated and condemned throughout history right up to the present day. This groundbreaking text examines luxury and its relationship with desire, status, consumption and economic value, exploring why luxury remains prominent even in the context of a global recession. Using approaches from cultural studies, semiotic research and aesthetics, Luxury presents a wide range of case studies including urban space and new technologies, travel, interior design, cars, fashion ads and jewellery to explore what luxury represents, and why, in the contemporary world. The book will be essential reading for students and scholars across a range of fashion studies, cultural studies and sociology, and anyone interested in the power and allure of luxury today.

In Victorian England, women's accessories were always much more than incidental finishing touches to their elaborate dress. Accessories helped women to fashion their identities.Victorian Fashion Accessories explores how women's use of gloves, parasols, fans and vanity sets revealed their class, gender and colonial aspirations. The colour and fit of a pair of gloves could help a middle-class woman indicate her class aspirations.The sun filtering through a rose-colored parasol would provide a woman of a certain age with the glow of youth. The use of a fan was a socially acceptable means of attracting interest and flirting.Even the choice of vanity set on a woman's bedroom dresser reflected her complicity with colonial expansion. By paying attention to the particular details of women's accessories we discover the beliefs embedded in these artefacts and enhance our understanding of the culture at large. Beaujot's engaging prose illuminates the complex identities of the women who used accessories in the Victorian culture that created and consumed them. Victorian Fashion Accessories is essential reading for students and scholars of, history, gender studies, cultural studies, material culture and fashion studies, as well as anyone interested in the history of dress.

From clothing to the painted and scarified nude body, through overt, public display or esoteric symbols known only to the initiated, dress can convey information about beliefs, faith, identity, power, agency, resistance, and fashion. Taking a 'senses' approach, Hume's engaging account takes into consideration the look, smell, feel, touch and sound of religious apparel, the 'smells and bells' of dress and its accoutrements, as well as the emotions evoked by donning religious garb. The book's global perspective provides wide-ranging, yet detailed, coverage of religious dress, from the history and meaning of the simple 'no-frills' attire of the Anabaptists to the power structure displayed in the elaborate fabrics and colours of the Roman Catholic Church; Hume examines the 2,500 year-old tradition of Buddhist robes, the nudity of India's holy men, and much more. With chapters on Sufism, Vodou, modern Pagans, as well as painted and tattooed indigenous and modern Western bodies, the reader is swept along on a sensual journey of the sight, sound, smell and feel of wearing religion. Unique in its field, this intriguing and informative anthropological approach to the body and dress is an essential read for students of Anthropology, Anthropology of Dress, Sociology, Fashion and Textiles, Culture and Dress, Body and Culture and Cultural Studies.

Throughout history certain forms and styles of dress have been deemed appropriate - or more significantly, inappropriate - for people as they age. Older women in particular have long been subject to social pressure to tone down, to adopt self-effacing, covered-up styles. But increasingly there are signs of change, as older women aspire to younger, more mainstream, styles, and retailers realize the potential of the 'grey market'. "Fashion and Age" is the first study to systematically explore the links between clothing and age, drawing on fashion theory and cultural gerontology to examine the changing ways in which age is imagined, experienced and understood in modern culture through the medium of dress. Clothes lie between the body and its social expression, and the book explores the significance of embodiment in dress and in the cultural constitution of age.Drawing on the views of older women, journalists and fashion editors, and clothing designers and retailers, it aims to widen the agenda of fashion studies to encompass the everyday dress of the majority, shifting the debate about age away from its current preoccupation with dependency, towards a fuller account of the lived experience of age. Fashion and Age will be of great interest to students of fashion, material culture, sociology, sociology of age, history of dress and to clothing designers.

Illustrated with specific subcultural examples and interviews with subculture members, "Body Style" explores the subcultural body and its style within global culture. Analyzed, theorized, politicized, and sensationalized, the subcultural body functions as a framework where individuals build a sense of self and subcultural identity. Drawing on eleven years of research examining the intersections within specific urban subcultures including Urban Tribalists, Modern Primitives, Punks, Cybers, Industrials, Skates, among others, the book reveals the subculture body as a site for understanding subcultural identity, resistance, agency and fashion. Divided into three main sections on subcultural body history, subcultural body identity and subcultural body styles, this book will be of particular interest to students of dress and fashion as well as those studying subculture from sociology and cultural studies perspectives.

This collection of papers on 'Dress and Identity' arose from a seminar series held by the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham in 2005. The present volume covers a wide chronological and geographical span: from archaic Greece to medieval Scotland by way of the Roman Empire and Anglo-Saxon England. The contributors come from a number of different academic disciplines: history, archaeology and classics. Contents: 1) Dress and Identity: an Introduction (Mary Harlow); 2) Costume as Text (Zvezdana Dode); 3) Veiling the Spartan Woman (Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones); 4) Dressing to Please Themselves: Clothing Choices for Roman Women (Mary Harlow); 5) The Archaeology of Adornment and the Toilet in Roman Britain and Gaul (Ellen Swift); 6) Dress and Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire (Ursula Rothe); 7) Investigating the Emperor's Toga: Privileging Images on Roman Coins (Ray Laurence); 8) Anglo-Saxon Woman: Fame, Anonymity, Identity and Clothing (Gale R. Owen-Crocker); 9) Representing Hierarchy and Homosociality: Vestments and Gender in Medieval Scotland (Penelope Dransart); 10) Cosmetics and Perfumes in the Roman World: A Glossary (Susan Stewart); 11) The Social Life of Museum Textiles: Some Comments on the Late Antique and Early Medieval Collection in the Ure Museum at the University of Reading (Anthea Harris).University of Birmingham IAA Interdisciplinary Series: Studies in Archaeology, History, Literature and Art Volume II.

The Swimsuit: Fashion from Poolside to Catwalk documents the modern swimsuit's trajectory from men's underwear and circus/performance wear to its unique niche in world fashion. It emphasizes the relationship between fashion, media, celebrity, sport and the cultivation of the modern body. This fascinating book provides an historical, sociological and cultural context in which to view how the swimsuit - and Australia, the country that significantly influenced its modern form - migrated from the cultural and colonial periphery to the centre of international attention. In addition, the book offers new perspectives on national histories of the swimsuit and investigates how traditional European fashion centers have opened up to new markets and modes of living, bringing together influences from around the globe. The Swimsuit is essential reading for students, scholars, and the general reader interested in fashion, popular culture, history, media, sport, and gender studies.

"Burns makes it abundantly clear . . . they just don't make heiresses like Millicent Rogers anymore." --Hampton Sides

Nobody knew how to live the high life like Standard Oil heiress Millicent Rogers. Born to luxury, she lived in a whirl of European vacations, exquisite clothing, and dashing men.

In "Searching for Beauty," Cherie Burns chronicles Rogers's rebellious life from her days as a young girl afflicted with rheumatic fever to her final days as one of the legendary chatelaines of New Mexico. She eloped with a penniless baron; danced tangos in European nightclubs; romanced Roald Dahl, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, and Hollywood icon Clark Gable; and triumphed in the world of fashion. She was muse to legendary American designer Charles James, appeared in "Vogue" and "Harper's Bazaar" and popularized Southwestern style by adopting turquoise jewelry, squaw skirts and short-waist jackets as her signature look.

With "Searching for Beauty," Millicent Rogers enters the pantheon of great American women who, like Diana Vreeland and Babe Paley, put their distinctive stamp on American style.

There's a popular misconception that breaking into the modeling business requires expensive head shots and other costly investments. Judy Goss, a former Ford model and professional with twenty years in the business, has set out to dispel that myth once and for all, and tell you how you can actually launch your career for $20 or less. Judy breaks the process down into four simple steps: Preparation, Pictures, Promotion, and Presentation. She gives countless suggestions and tells all sorts of industry secrets, such as how to:
* Determine what type of model you are
* Take your own pictures at home in the right poses and clothes
* Prepare what to say and do at casting calls
* Avoid costly scams
* And much more.
Judy's expert advice will guide aspiring models of any age through the process of finding representation with a reputable agency or manager, and it provides a valuable resource to fall back on even after models start working. This comprehensive, step-by-step guide is the only book you'll need to launch the career of your dreams.

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.

In this beautifully written and lavishly illustrated book Liza Dalby traces the history of the kimono - its designs, uses, aesthetics and social significance - and in doing so explores the world of the geisha, last wearers of the kimono. The colourful and stylised kimono, the national garment of Japan, expresses not only Japanese fashion and design taste but also reveals something of the soul of Japan. Amazingly beautiful, many today consider it impractical, too uncomfortable to wear in modern life - it was generally discarded by men for suits and ties a century ago, and now only worn occasionally by women. However, the kimono still retains a powerful hold on the Japanese heart and mind, and provides a link to Japan's past.

Changing trends in fashion have always reflected large-scale social and cultural changes. Changing Fashion presents for the first time a multi-disciplinary approach to examining fashion change, bringing together theory from fashion studies, cultural studies, sociology, psychology and art history, amongst others.Ideal for the undergraduate student of fashion and cultural studies, the book has a wide range of contemporary and historical case material which provides practical examples of trend analysis and change, from the art deco textile designs of Sonia Delaunay to the chameleonic shifts in Bob Dylan's appearance over time. Key issues in fashion and identity, such as race, gender and consumption are examined from different disciplinary angles to provide a critical overview of the field. Changing Fashion provides a concise guide to the main theories across disciplines that explain how and why media, clothing styles, and cultural practices fall in and out of fashion.

'A sensual and intellectual pleasure from start to finish' - Deborah Levy, author of The Cost of Living We are all dressed. But how often do we pause to think about the place of our clothes in our lives? What unconscious thoughts do we express when we dress every day? Can memories, meaning and ideas be wrapped up in a winter coat? These are the questions that interest Shahidha Bari, as she explores the secret language of our clothes. Ranging freely through literature, art, film and philosophy, Dressed tracks the hidden power of clothes in our culture and our daily lives. From the depredations of violence and ageing to our longing for freedom, love and privacy, from the objectification of women to the crisis of masculinity, each garment exposes a fresh dilemma. Item by item, the story of ourselves unravels. Evocative, enlightening and dazzlingly original, Dressed is not just about clothes as objects of fashion or as a means of self-expression. This is a book about the deepest philosophical questions of who we are, how we see ourselves and how we dress to face the world.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Tamar's instrument of seduction in the Hebrew Bible, Penelope's shroud in Homer's Odyssey, accessory of brides as well as widows, and hallmark of the religious and the wealthy, the veil has historically been an intriguing signifier. Initially donned in France for liturgical purposes and later for masked balls and as a sun- and windscreen at the seashore, face-covering veils were adopted for fashionable urban use during the reign of Napoleon III. In Sheer Presence, Marni Reva Kessler demonstrates how this ubiquitous garment and its visual representations knot together many of the precepts of Parisian life. Considering the period from the beginning of Napoleon III's rule in 1852 to 1889, when the Paris Universal Exhibition displayed veiled North African Muslims and other indigenous colonial peoples, Kessler deftly connects the increased presence of the veil on the streets and on canvas to Haussmann's massive renovation of Paris. The fashion of veil wearing, she argues, was imbricated with broader concerns: fears of dust and disease fueled by Haussmannization and class mixing on the city streets, changes in ideals of youth and beauty, attempts to increase popular support for imperialism, and the development of modernist art practices. A veil was protection for the proper woman from the vices associated with the modern city, preserving--at least on the surface--her femininity and class superiority. Kessler explores these themes with close readings of paintings by Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, and Edouard Manet--including Manet's perplexing portraits of artist Berthe Morisot--as well as photographs, images from the popular press, engravings, lithographs, and academic paintings. She alsomines French fashion journals, etiquette books, novels, and medical publications for clues to the veil's complex meanings during the period. Positioning the veil directly at the intersection of feminist, formalist, and social art history, Kessler offers a fresh perspective on period discourses of public health, seduction and sexuality, colonial stereotypes, and, ultimately, an emerging modernity. Marni Reva Kessler is assistant professor of art history at the University of Kansas.

Guys don't wear wolf pelts anymore, but not much else has changed in the world of men's clothes: the right suit, or tie, or shirt, or shoes still projects mystery, erotic potential, and power. And to negotiate these hurdles with style and confidence, "Men's Style" is indispensable---a valuable source of practical advice for how to dress in a world of conflicting fashion imperatives, and a witty guide to the history, trends, codes, and conventions of men's attire.
In chapters and amusing sidebars on shoes, suits, shirts and ties, formal and casual wear, underwear and swimsuits, cufflinks and watches, coats, hats, and scarves, Russell Smith steers a confident course between the twin hazards of blandness and vulgarity to articulate a philosophy of dress that can take you anywhere.
Here you'll find the rules for looking the part at the office, a formal function, or the hippest party---and learn when you can toss those rules aside. And you'll find level answers to all of your questions. What color suit should a man buy first? Should socks match the belt, pants, or shoes? What tuxedos are always in, and which aren't ever? And what's required of ambiguous social situations like "dress casual" and "black-tie optional"? The answers are here, in a book that's full of trivia, history, and guidance---finally, the perfect guide for brothers, fathers, sons, and selves.

This book provides a much-needed evaluation of the history of men's fashion advertising in the first half of the twentieth century. Arguably, modernism provided the most visually arresting and playful poster and press advertising campaigns ever launched. Undoubtedly one of the most fecund and complex periods in the history of menswear promotion, the period saw vast sums of money spent on advertising men's clothing by the likes of Austin Reed, the Fifty Shilling Tailors, Simpson and Barratt shoes. Replete with confident head-turners, many posters of the period featured dandies knowingly offering up their bodies for the delectation of women - an irony made doubly rich by the fact that these images were consumed almost exclusively by men. As Jobling expertly shows, the erotic charge in evidence in the representation of the buff gymnos in Calvin Klein's 80's campaigns had much earlier antecedents. There was, surprisingly, a pronounced fetishistic aspect coupled with sexual ambiguity in publicity for underwear in the interwar period. Looking well beyond issues of representation to broader socio-economic contexts in this deeply researched and original study, Jobling addresses an exciting range of discourses relating to professionalization, modernity, mass-communication and marketing, display and consumer psychology.