In November 1922, the combined efforts of Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon revealed to the world the 'wonderful things' buried in Tutankhamen's tomb, Egypt had already been a source for new trends in fashion for quite some time: in the early 19th century, for example, Napoleon's Egyptian campaign contributed to the popularization of Kashmir shawls, while the inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869 stimulated 'Egyptianizing' trends in gowns, jewellery and textiles. Post-1922, a veritable Egyptomania craze invested all artistic fields, quickly becoming a dominant Art Deco motif: flapper-style dresses were elaborately embroidered with beaded Egyptian patterns, evening bags were decorated with hieroglyphics, brooches nonchalantly sported ancient scarabs, and the sleek black bobs favored by the admired icons of the time, Louise Brooks and Clara Bow, looked up to the fabled Egyptian beauty of Nefertiti and Cleopatra. Egyptomania often resurfaces in 21st-century fashion as well: the awe-inspiring John Galliano's designs for Dior Spring-Summer 2004 brought back pharaonic crowns in lieu of headdresses in a triumph of gold-encrusted creations, the ancient practice of mummification was referenced by Iris van Herpen's Fall 2009 collection and Egyptian vibes resonated in Chanel's M tiers d'Art 2018/2019 collection. Through the combination of rigorous fashion history research, intriguing images and well-informed, but approachable, writing, Style from the Nile offers a comprehensive overview of a fascinating phenomenon that, to this day, continues to have a mesmerizing appeal.

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.