Two women, virtual strangers, sit hand-in-hand across a narrow table, both intent on the same thing - achieving the perfect manicure. Encounters like this occur thousands of times across the United States in nail salons increasingly owned and operated by Asian immigrants. This study looks closely for the first time at these intimate encounters, focusing on New York City, where such nail salons have become ubiquitous. Drawing from rich and compelling interviews, Miliann Kang takes us inside the nail industry, asking such questions as: Why have nail salons become so popular? Why do so many Asian women, and Korean women in particular, provide these services? Kang discovers multiple motivations for the manicure - from the pampering of white middle class women to the artistic self-expression of working class African American women to the mass consumption of body-related services. Contrary to notions of beauty service establishments as spaces for building community among women, "The Managed Hand" finds that while tentative and fragile solidarities can emerge across the manicure table, they generally give way to even more powerful divisions of race, class, and immigration.

A history of color and commerce from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design. When the fashion industry declares that lime green is the new black, or instructs us to "think pink!," it is not the result of a backroom deal forged by a secretive cabal of fashion journalists, designers, manufacturers, and the editor of Vogue. It is the latest development of a color revolution that has been unfolding for more than a century. In this book, the award-winning historian Regina Lee Blaszczyk traces the relationship of color and commerce, from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of the color profession in consumer culture. Blaszczyk examines the evolution of the color profession from 1850 to 1970, telling the stories of innovators who managed the color cornucopia that modern artificial dyes and pigments made possible. These "color stylists," "color forecasters," and "color engineers" helped corporations understand the art of illusion and the psychology of color. Blaszczyk describes the strategic burst of color that took place in the 1920s, when General Motors introduced a bright blue sedan to compete with Ford's all-black Model T and when housewares became available in a range of brilliant hues. She explains the process of color forecasting-not a conspiracy to manipulate hapless consumers but a careful reading of cultural trends and consumer taste. And she shows how color information flowed from the fashion houses of Paris to textile mills in New Jersey. Today professional colorists are part of design management teams at such global corporations as Hilton, Disney, and Toyota. The Color Revolution tells the history of how colorists help industry capture the hearts and dollars of consumers.

When she was 16, Tala Raassi went to a party. She talked to boys, and wore a mini-skirt. She was punished with 40 lashes and five days in jail. Growing up in Tehran, Tala learnt to use fashion as a getaway whenever she suffered from the restrictions of her society. Labeled a rebel with a propensity to break the rules, she quickly came to realise being hungry for freedom in Iran was a recipe for disaster. Tala's lashes served as a stark warning to her - she needed to escape. Moving to the USA, she was able to develop her own clothing label to massive success. But the cut-throat world of Western fashion wasn't exactly how she had imagined it. She witnessed first-hand the ups and downs of hard work, hard decisions, and hard truths. Fashion Is Freedom is an inspiring true story of how courage, a dream, and some needle and thread can change a life forever...

Vidal Sassoon's extraordinary life has taken him from an impoverished East End childhood to global fame. The father of modern hairdressing, his slick sharp cutting took the fashion world by storm and reinvented the hairdressers' art. Before Vidal Sassoon, a trip to the hairdressers meant a shampoo and set or a stiffly lacquered up-do that would last a week - or more. After Vidal Sassoon, hair was sleek, smooth and very, very stylish. Along with his lifelong friend and partner in style, Mary Quant, who he first met in 1957 and who to this day sports a Sassoon-style geometric bob, he styled the 1960s. As memorable as the mini - be it car or skirt - he is one of the few people who can genuinely be described as iconic. His memoirs are as rich in anecdote as one might hope and full of surprising and often moving stories of his early life - his time at the Spanish & Portuguese Jewish Orphanage in Maida Vale, fighting Fascists in London's East End and fighting in the army of the fledgling state of Israel in the late Forties. And then there's the extraordinary career, during which he cut the hair of everyone who was anyone, launched salons all over the world, founded the hairdressing school that still bears his name and became a global brand, with Vidal Sassoon products on all our bathroom shelves.

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.

The Fashion Business Reader is the first comprehensive anthology of classic and cutting-edge writings on the global fashion business, from production to consumption. Bringing together a rich interdisciplinary and international range of writings in one volume, this essential text encompasses creative, theoretical, and practical approaches from scholarship spanning business, the social sciences, arts, and humanities. As well as extracts from ground-breaking journal articles, book chapters, and other key writings, the reader includes several newly commissioned articles on contemporary themes and methodological approaches. Each section of the volume contains an introduction by an expert scholar plus a guide to further reading, and each individual extract is introduced so that readers can place important writings in context. This is an essential course text for students on a wide range of fashion and business courses and a one-stop authoritative reference for scholars and professionals.

Today, OPI is known as a global beauty icon, famous for its trend-setting colors, unforgettable shade names, and celebrity collaborations with the biggest stars from film, television, music, and sports. But behind all the glamour is the little-known tale of OPI's unlikely origins-an intimate and inspiring story of a timid schoolgirl who arrives in this country with little money and no English and becomes the business leader and industry game-changer known worldwide as "Suzi, the First Lady of Nails." In I'm Not Really a Waitress--titled after OPI's top-selling nail color--Suzi reveals the events that led her family to flee Communist Hungary and eventually come to New York City in pursuit of the American dream. She shares how those early experiences gave rise to OPI's revolutionary vision of freedom and empowerment, and how Suzi transformed an industry by celebrating the power of color-and of women themselves.

This student book has been thoroughly reviewed by VTCT and includes exclusive guidance and advice. The engaging text-design is packed with learning features to help students embed the necessary knowledge and understanding.

Globalization and economic restructuring have decimated formal jobs in developing countries, pushing many women into informal employment such as direct selling of cosmetics, perfume, and other personal care products as a way to "make up the difference" between household income and expenses. In Ecuador, with its persistent economic crisis and few opportunities for financially and personally rewarding work, women increasingly choose direct selling as a way to earn income by activating their social networks. While few women earn the cars and trips that are iconic prizes in the direct selling organization, many use direct selling as part of a set of household survival strategies. In this first in-depth study of a cosmetics direct selling organization in Latin America, Erynn Masi de Casanova explores women's identities as workers, including their juggling of paid work and domestic responsibilities, their ideas about professional appearance, and their strategies for collecting money from customers. Focusing on women who work for the country's leading direct selling organization, she offers fascinating portraits of the everyday lives of women selling personal care products in Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil. Addressing gender relations (including a look at men's direct and indirect involvement), the importance of image, and the social and economic context of direct selling, Casanova challenges assumptions that this kind of flexible employment resolves women's work/home conflicts and offers an important new perspective on women's work in developing countries.

The Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons is undoubtedly one of the world's major fashion designers. In 2017 she was the second living designer to ever be given a retrospective at the renowned Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her work exerts an extraordinary influence over succeeding generations of designers and is a major point of reference for all those wishing to explore the place of fashion in contemporary culture. The 14 essays in this collection, written by eminent fashion theorists from around the world, ask what is the relationship of Kawakubo's work to art, philosophy and architecture, and ultimately illustrate how Kawakubo's creative output allows us to understand the very notion of fashion itself.

Since the 1990s, young Asian Americans including Doo-Ri Chung, Derek Lam, Thakoon Panichgul, Alexander Wang, and Jason Wu have emerged as leading fashion designers. They have won prestigious awards, been chosen to head major clothing labels, and had their designs featured in "Vogue," "Harper's Bazaar," and other fashion magazines. At the same time that these designers were rising to prominence, the fashion world was embracing Asian chic. During the 1990s, "Asian" shapes, fabrics, iconography, and colors filled couture runways and mass-market clothing racks. In "The Beautiful Generation," Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu explores the role of Asian American designers in New York's fashion industry, paying particular attention to how they relate to the garment workers who produce their goods and to Asianness as a fashionable commodity. She draws on conversations with design students, fashion curators, and fashion publicists; interviews with nearly thirty Asian American designers who have their own labels; and time spent with those designers in their shops and studios, on their factory visits, and at their fashion shows. "The Beautiful Generation" links the rise of Asian American designers to historical patterns of immigration, racial formation, and globalized labor, and to familial and family-like connections between designers and garment workers.

With the media's increasing weight on public opinion, a positive public image has become an integral part of management and a vital factor in business success-especially in the fashion industry. This textbook will deliver a practical approach to the world of public relations and image management, with in-depth case studies featuring prominent apparel and textile companies. Concentrating on the pragmatic aspects of public relations and the fundamentals of fashion public relations, principles and concepts are placed in context of what the student will actually do in the business world. Students will be equipped with the real-world approaches and techniques for a successful career in fashion public relations. Features: -- Case studies featuring elements of a public relations campaign for well-known companies -- Interviews with successful public relations managers discussing how s/he applied the principles of the chapter discussed and the results -- Real-life simulations of problems which managers interviewed for the case studies have encountered, and approaches on how they solved them -- In-class exercises, where students can pair up and practice the public relations principles discussed in the chapter -- Instructor's Guide provides suggestions for planning the course and using the text in the classroom -- PowerPoint(r) Presentation provides outlines and ideas for lectures; compatible with PC and Mac platforms

Despite all the medical and media attention focused on the rate of overweight and obesity in the African American population, African American images and body types are greatly influencing changes in the fashion, fitness, advertising, television and movie industries. This is because overweight, like beauty, can be in the eye of the beholder. Most research studies investigating attitudes about body image and body type among African Americans have shown they are more satisfied with their bodies than are their white counterparts and that there appears to be a wider range of acceptable body shapes and weights, and a more flexible standard of attractiveness, among black Americans as compared to whites. That fact is not being lost on leaders of industries that might profit from understanding this wider range of beauty, as well as playing to it. In this book, medical anthropologist Eric Bailey introduces and explains the self-acceptance and body image satisfaction of African Americans, and traces how that has spurred changes in industry. His book fills the void of scientific evidence to enhance the understanding of African Americans' perceptions related to body image and beauty-and is the first to document these issues from the perspective of an African American male. Despite all the medical and media attention focused on the rate of overweight and obesity in the African American population, African American images and body types are greatly influencing changes in the fashion, fitness, advertising, television, and movie industries. This is because overweight, like beauty, can be in the eye of the beholder. Most research studies investigating attitudes about body image and body type among African Americans have shown they are more satisfied with their bodies than are their white counterparts. Most black women, for example, are of course concerned with how they look, but do not judge themselves in terms of their weight and do not believe they are valued mostly on the basis of their bodies. Black teen girls most often say being thick and curvaceous with large hips and ample thighs is seen as the most desirable body shape. Thus, there appears to be a wider range of acceptable body shapes and weights, and a more flexible standard of attractiveness, among black Americans as compared to whites. That fact is not lost on leaders of industries that might profit from understanding this wider range of beauty, as well as playing to it. Voluptuous supermodel Tyra Banks is just one African American who's broken the mold in that industry. The effects have been seen right down to department and local clothes stores, where lines of larger and plus-size fashions are expanding, becoming more colorful and more ornate. In the fitness industry, health gurus Madonna Grimes and Billy Blanks have been revolutionizing how people get fit and how fitness needs to be redeveloped for the African American population. Advertising has taken a similar turn, not the least manifestation of which were the major campaigns Dove and Nike ran in 2005 with plus-sized actresses (who continue to appear in promotions for both companies). In movies and on television shows, the African American beautiful body image has followed suit. In this book, medical anthropologist Eric Bailey introduces and explains the self-acceptance and body image satisfaction of African Americans, and traces how that has spurred changes in industry. His book fills the void of scientific evidence to enhance the understanding of African Americans' perceptions related to body image and beauty-and is the first to document these issues from the perspective of an African American male.

It is said that "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." It is human nature to be noticed and appreciated, and it is not surprising that the fairer sex desires to be beautiful, a source of attention, appreciation and secret envy. Beauty has acquired new dimensions and an altogether new definition. Beauty, today, engulfs grace, intelligence, a healthy and toned body, and an unmatched poise. This book provides detailed information - the secret pathways to success, the endless efforts and the hard work - that goes into the making of a beauty queen.

In virtually all the countries of the world, men, and to a lesser extent women, are today dressed in very similar clothing. This book gives a compelling account and analysis of the process by which this has come about. At the same time it takes seriously those places where, for whatever reason, this process has not occurred, or has been reversed, and provides explanations for these developments.
The first part of this story recounts how the cultural, political and economic power of Europe and, from the later nineteenth century North America, has provided an impetus for the adoption of whatever was at that time standard Western dress. Set against this, Robert Ross shows how the adoption of European style dress, or its rejection, has always been a political act, performed most frequently in order to claim equality with colonial masters, more often a male option, or to stress distinction from them, which women, perhaps under male duress, more frequently did.
The book takes a refreshing global perspective to its subject, with all continents and many countries being discussed. It investigates not merely the symbolic and message-bearing aspects of clothing, but also practical matters of production and, equally importantly, distribution.

At a glance, high fashion and feminism seem unlikely partners. Between the First and Second World Wars, however, these forces combined femininity and modernity to create the new, modern French woman. In this engaging study, Mary Lynn Stewart reveals the fashion industry as an integral part of women's transition into modernity.

Analyzing what female columnists in fashion magazines and popular women novelists wrote about the "new silhouette," Stewart shows how bourgeois women feminized the more severe, masculine images that elite designers promoted to create a hybrid form of modern that both emancipated women and celebrated their femininity. She delves into the intricacies of marketing the new clothes and the new image to middle-class women and examines the nuts and bolts of a changing industry -- including textile production, relationships between suppliers and department stores, and privacy and intellectual property issues surrounding ready-to-wear couture designs.

Dressing Modern Frenchwomen draws from thousands of magazine covers, advertisements, fashion columns, and features to uncover and untangle the fascinating relationships among the fashion industry, the development of modern marketing techniques, and the evolution of the modern woman as active, mobile, and liberated.

New York, Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo. This familiar list of cities conjures up the image of high fashion. This book examines the powerful relationship between metropolitan modernity and fashion culture. The authors look at the significance of certain key sites in fashion's world order and at transformations in the connections between key cities. The status of fashion capital has now become a goal for urban boosters and planners, part of the wider promotion of the "cultural economy" of major cities. In a rapidly changing global fashion system new centres like Shanghai are making claims to join the ranks of Fashion's World Cities. In chapters ranging from Los Angeles to Moscow and Dakar to Mumbai, Fashion's World Cities explores the relationship between major metropolises and the production, consumption and mythologizing of fashion.

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.

Howard Murad, M.D., the renowned Los Angeles dermatologist, has studied the effects of the environment on skin and aging for thirty years. The methods he's developed to counteract those effects are packed into this book's simple 5-Minute twice-a-day regimen. Murad's revolutionary discoveries include:
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In this revealing social history, Daniel Thomas Cook explores the roots of children's consumer culture--and the commodification of childhood itself--by looking at the rise, growth, and segmentation of the children's clothing industry. Cook describes how in the early twentieth century merchants, manufacturers, and advertisers of children's clothing began to aim commercial messages at the child rather than the mother. Cook situates this fundamental shift in perspective within the broader transformation of the child into a legitimate, individualized, self-contained consumer.

"The Commodification of Childhood" begins with the publication of the children's wear industry's first trade journal, " The Infants' Department, " in 1917 and extends into the early 1960s, by which time the changes Cook chronicles were largely complete. Analyzing trade journals and other documentary sources, Cook shows how the industry created a market by developing and promulgating new understandings of the "nature," needs, and motivations of the child consumer. He discusses various ways that discursive constructions of the consuming child were made material: in the creation of separate children's clothing departments, in their segmentation and layout by age and gender gradations (such as infant, toddler, boys, girls, tweens, and teens), in merchants' treatment of children as individuals on the retail floor, and in displays designed to appeal directly to children. Ultimately, " The Commodification of Childhood" provides a compelling argument that any consideration of "the child" must necessarily take into account how childhood came to be understood through, and structured by, a market idiom.

The Fashion Intern is intended for the student employed in any segment of the textile and apparel industry. Drawing on her experience with students and her earlier edition of Guide to Analyzing Your Fashion Industry Internship,Granger provides information for any organization along the channel of distribution. This guide, with accompanying CD-ROM, is intended for the student employed in any segment of the apparel, accessories, soft goods and home interior industries. It is written to accommodate interns in fashion merchandising, retailing, design, product development, promotion and production. It encourages interns to view the fashion industry from a marketing perspective.

Profitability determines the success of every retail business and manufacturer. As a fashion industry consultant and instructor of retail mathematics, Steven Lindner has developed a textbook that teaches students how to negotiate agreements and how to analyze each element presented in profitability reports. This upper-level textbook focuses on the basic components of the buyer-vendor relationship, including negotiations and the creation and assessment of profitability reports. Students will also learn how to interpret standard financial documents such as profit-and-loss statements and balance sheets. In the competitive retail industry, these skills are essential.

"Three Faces of Beauty" offers a unique approach to understanding globalization and cultural change based on a comparative, ethnographic study of a nearly universal institution: the beauty salon. Susan Ossman traces the images and words of the beauty industry as they developed historically between Paris, Cairo, and Casablanca and then vividly demonstrates how such images are embodied today in salons located in each city.
By examining how images from fashion magazines, film, and advertising are enacted in beauty salons, Ossman demonstrates how embodiment is able to display and rework certain hierarchies. While offering the possibility of freedom from the tethers of status, nation, religion, and nature, beauty is created by these very categories and values, Ossman shows. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, she documents the various rituals of welcome, choice-making, pricing practices, and spatial arrangements in multiple salons . She also reveals ways in which patrons in all three cities imagine and co-opt looks they believe are fashionable in the other cities. By observing salons as scenes of instruction, Ossman reveals that beautiful bodies evolve within the intertwining contexts of media, modernity, location, time, postcolonialism, and male expectation.