Explore the vast range of titles available.

Taking cultural theorist Michel de Certeau's notion of 'the everyday' as a critical starting point, this book considers how fashion shapes and is shaped by everyday life. Looking historically for the imprint of fashion within everyday routines such as going to work or shopping, or in leisure activities like dancing, it identifies the 'fashion system of the ordinary', in which clothing has a distinct role in the making of self and identity.

As the practice of fashion curation extends into commercial galleries, public and retail spaces, and even to the individual self, professional concepts of “curating” are undergoing rapid change. Today, everyone is seemingly able to “curate”, but where does this leave the traditional understanding of curation as clothing collected and displayed in a museum? This thought-provoking volume explores the practice of fashion curating in the 21st century, bridging the gap between methods of display and notions of “the curatorial” in fashion exhibitions, commercial settings, and the virtual world. From fashion’s earliest forays into the museum to creative collaborations between luxury fashion brands and artists, this book challenges understandings of fashion curation by drawing on the palpably new spaces, places, and actors in today’s curating scene. Exploring poetic and performative museum displays in venues such as the V&A, Somerset House, MoMu, and the Royal Ontario Museum, alongside the ways that brands such as Dior, Chanel, and Louis Vuitton have made use of “the curatorial” in their own commercial strategies, Fashion Curating asks pressing questions about controversial funding and collaboration from the commercial fashion sector, and the limitations of producing exhibitions that are at the same time critical and popular. Bringing together approaches from fashion curators, designers, and world-renowned academics, curation is positioned as a critical practice that opens up new ways of conceptualizing and theorizing fashion, challenging how we think and what we already know.

Fashion is both public and private, material and symbolic, always caught within the lived experience and providing an incredible tool to study culture and history. The Fabric of Cultures examines the impact of fashion as a manufacturing industry and as a culture industry that shapes the identities of nations and cities in a cross-cultural perspective, within a global framework. The collected essays investigate local and global economies, cultures and identities and the book offers for the first time, a wide spectrum of case studies which focus on a diversity of geographical spaces and places, from global capitals of fashion such as New York, to countries less known or identifiable for fashion such as contemporary Greece and soviet Russia. Highly illustrated and including essays from all over the world, The Fabric of Cultures provides a comprehensive survey of the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on fashion, identity and globalisation. List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Eugenia Paulicelli and Hazel Clark 1. From Potlach to Wal-Mart: Courtly and Capitalist Hierarchies through Dress Jane Schneider 2. Dressing the Nation: Indian Cinema Costume and the Making of a National Fashion, 1947-1957 Rachel Morris 3. Made in America: Paris, New York, and Postwar Fashion Photography Helena Cunha Ribeiro 4. Framing the Self, Staging Identity: Clothing and Italian Style in the Films of Michelangelo Antonioni (1950-1964) Eugenia Paulicelli 5. The Art of Dressing. Body, Gender and Discourse on fashion in Soviet Russia in the 1950s and 1960s Olga Gurova 6. Making Modernity Appropriate and Tradition Fashionable: Debates about Dress, Identity, and Gender in Ho Chi Minh City Ann Marie Leshkowich 7. Youth, Gender, and Secondhand Clothing in Lusaka, Zambia: Local and Global Styles Karen Tranberg Hansen 8. Fashion Design and Technologies in a Global Context Michiel Scheffer 9. Fabricating Greekness: from Fustanella to the Glossy Page Michael Skafidas 10. Fashion Brazil: South American Style, Culture and Industry Valéria Brandini 11. Fashioning \"China Style\" in the Twenty First Century Hazel Clark 12. From Factories to Fashion: An Intern’s Experience of a Global Fashion Capital Christina H. Moon Index Eugenia Paulicelli is Professor of Italian, Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is also Co-Director of the Graduate Center Fashion Studies Concentration. Her recent publications include Fashion under Fascism: Beyond the Black Shirt (2004) and her articles on fashion have appeared in the journals, Fashion Theory and Gender & History . Hazel Clark is Dean, School of Art and Design History and Theory, Parsons The New School for Design, New York. She is a design historian and theorist, with a specialist interest in fashion, design and cultural identity. She is the author of The Cheongsam (2000) and co-editor, with A. Palmer of Old Clothes, New Looks: Second Hand Fashion (2005).

Pulse wave analysis (PWA) using applanation tonometry is a non-invasive technique for assessing cardiovascular function. It produces three important indices: ejection duration index (ED%), augmentation index adjusted for heart rate (AIX@75), and subendocardial viability ratio (SEVR%). The aim of this study was to assess within- and between-observer repeatability of these measurements. After resting supine for 15 minutes, 20 ambulant patients (16 male) in sinus rhythm underwent four PWA measurements on a single occasion. Two nurses (A & B) independently and alternately undertook PWA measurements using the same equipment (Omron HEM-757; SphygmoCor with Millar hand-held tonometer) blind to the other nurse's PWA measurements. Within- and between-observer differences were analysed using the Bland-Altman `limits of agreement' approach (mean difference ± 2 standard deviations, 2SD). Mean age was 56 (blood pressure, BP 136/79; pulse rate 64). BP/PWA measurements remained stable during assessment. Based on the average of two PWA measurements the mean ± 2SD between-observer difference in ED% was 0.3 ± 2.0; AIX@75 1.0 ± 3.9; and SEVR% 1.7 ± 14.2. Based on a single PWA measurement the between-observer difference was ED% 0.3 ± 3.3; AIX@75 1.7 ± 6.9; and SEVR% 0.6 ± 22.6. Within-observer differences for nurse-A were ED% 0.0 ± 5.4; AIX@75 1.5 ± 7.0; and SEVR% 1.7 ± 39.0 (nurse-B: 0.1 ± 3.8; 0.1 ± 8.0; and 0.6 ± 23.3, respectively). PWA demonstrates high levels of repeatability even when used by relatively inexperienced staff and has the potential to be included in the routine cardiovascular assessment of ambulant patients.

Systemic inflammation may be a common process that underpins both atherosclerosis and extra-articular features (ExRA) of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We evaluated the relationship between ExRA and arterial dysfunction in 114 consecutive patients with RA (82% women) without overt arterial disease aged 40–65 years. A trained research nurse undertook ‘SphygmoCor’ pulse wave analysis (PWA) using radial applanation tonometry to measure the extent (augmentation index, AIX%) and timing (reflected wave transit time, RWT, msec) of aortic wave reflection. Assessment included fasting blood sample, patient questionnaire and medical record review. Mean differences were adjusted for age, sex, mean blood pressure, smoking pack-years, fasting cholesterol, Stanford HAQ score and erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Mean age was 54 (SD 7) and median RA duration 10 (IQR 4–17) years. There was a trend for arterial dysfunction (higher AIX%; lower RWT) to increase as the number of ExRA features rose, but no difference in AIX% (−0.5, 95%CI −2.8 to 1.8, P  = 0.65) or RWT (0.3 ms, 95%CI −3.6 to 4.2, P  = 0.86) between ‘any ExRA’ and ‘no ExRA’. Arterial dysfunction was not associated with the presence of rheumatoid nodules, Sjogren’s syndrome or carpal tunnel syndrome. Our study was too small to determine whether severe (‘Malmo’) ExRA (vasculitis, pericarditis, episcleritis) was truly associated with a higher AIX% (3.8, 95%CI −2.3 to 9.9, P  = 0.22) and lower RWT (−5.5 ms 95%CI −13.1 to 2.1, P  = 0.16). While arterial dysfunction may be associated with the number of ExRA features and severe ExRA, it does not appear to be associated with other ExRA features.

Educator, scholar, seminal figure in the formation of design history in Britain and former Chair of the Design History Society (1985-1987), John Heskett died in Hove, Sussex on 25 February 2014, aged 76. (Author abstract)

The author examines the development of design in Hong Kong, from a dominant Western and American design culture to a more complex mix referring to Asian and Western cultures simultaneously. Early manufacturing in Hong Kong emphasised labour-intensive mass production of designs adapted from elsewhere; there has been a gradual move since the 1990s to original designs and brand development. Suggests three stages of evolution of the move to synthesise local Chinese culture with foreign design: quotation, mimicry, and finally transformation, where influences have been assimilated to become natural. As examples, she gives case studies of several designers working in Hong Kong: graphic designers Henry Steiner, Kan Tai Keung and Alan Chan; fashion designer Vivienne Tam; luxury goods brand Shanghai Tang, launched by David Tang; and household goods and lifestyle products firm G.O.D. (Goods Of Desire) founded by architect Douglas Young. She comments on the need for a new Hong Kong subjectivity, looking at the Asian Lifestyle Lab at Hong Kong Polytechnic University under designer Benny Ding Leong. Design activism is becoming evident, often as a protest against the force of urban development; one unit is the Community Museum Project, a collective documenting the everyday life of and values of Hong Kong.