A groundbreaking, informative, and thought-provoking exploration of fur's fashionable and controversial history The first and only book of its kind, Fur: A Sensitive History looks at the impact of fur on society, politics, and, of course, fashion. This material has a long, complex, and rich history, culminating in recent and ongoing anti-fur debates. Jonathan Faiers discusses how fur-long praised for its warmth, softness, and connotation of status-became so controversial, at the center of campaigns against animal cruelty and the movement toward ethical fashion. At the same time, fake fur now faces a backlash of its own, given the environmental impact of its manufacture and its links to fast fashion. Divided into five sections-dedicated to hair, pelt, coat, skin, and fleece-the book surveys not only the politics of fur but also its centrality to western fashion, the tactile pleasure it gives, and its use in literature, art, and film. This thoughtfully reasoned, eloquently written, and spectacularly illustrated examination of fur is both timely and essential, filling a gap in fashion scholarship and appealing to a broad audience.

An outstanding and comprehensive contribution to the history of Tartan. – Telegraph Featuring new insights and an additional chapter on masculinities, this updated edition of Tartan revitalizes discussions about the fabric’s traditional, sentimental Highland origins and its deliberate subversion by contemporary designers. Tartan’s history has made it uniquely capable of expressing both conformity and subversion, tradition and innovation. Through positioning tartan within broader philosophical, political and cultural contexts, from the tartan-clad Highland regiments and Queen Victoria’s royal endorsement, to the fabric’s influence on Westwood and McQueen and a generation of Japanese designers such as Watanabe and Takahashi, Jonathan Faiers traces tartan's development from clanship to contemporary fashion and its enormous domestic and global impact. Beautifully illustrated and weaving together a story out of history, art, music, film and fashion, Tartan demonstrates that this most traditional and radical fabric has become one of extraordinary versatility and far-reaching appeal.

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.

A thought-provoking examination of the challenging and sometimes sinister roles that fashion has played in the history of cinema When Marlene Dietrich makes her entrance in Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright, the Dior dress she wears immediately draws the viewer's attention-not because of its designer label, but owing to the dramatic blood stains ruining its stylish surface. Fashion in film goes far beyond glamorous costumes on glamorous stars, as Jonathan Faiers proves in Dressing Dangerously, a pioneering study of the "cinematic negative wardrobe" revealed in mainstream movies. The book emphasizes how problematic, even shocking depictions of dress, until now largely overlooked, play pivotal roles in shaping film narrative. Integrating fashion theory, film analysis, and literature, the insightful text investigates the ways cinema influences fashion and, conversely, how fashion speaks to film. The book also reveals how clothing, imbued with its own symbolic meaning, can be read much like a text; when used to provocative effect, for example, in films such as Villain,Leave Her to Heaven, and Casino, the stars' costumes as well as their actions elicit a complex set of emotional responses. Dressing Dangerously brings together a wealth of illustrations, from glossy publicity photos featuring immaculately dressed stars to film stills that capture "dangerously" fashionable moments.