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The study of fashion has exploded in recent decades, yet what this all means or quite where it might take us is not clear. This new book helps to bring fashion into focus, with a comprehensive guide to the key theories, perspectives and developments in the field. Tim Edwards includes coverage of all the major theories of fashion, including recent scholarship, alongside subcultural analysis and an in-depth look at production. Individual topics include: men’s fashion, masculinity and the suit women’s fashion and the role of sexuality children, the body and fashion the role of celebrity and designer label culture globalisation and the production of fashion. Fashion in Focus is the ideal companion for students in the arts and social sciences, especially those studying issues such as fashion, gender, sexuality and consumer culture. \"This book will form a most valuable addition to the existing literature & will be very, very useful for those of us who teach Cultural Studies to large numbers of fashion students. Tim Edwards has the rare ability to render complex ideas accessible, and he writes beautifully [...] his books are a pleasure to read.\" - Pamela Church Gibson, London College of Fashion \"The book provides a useful and concise summary of the main sociological traditions of fashion studies…it addresses and advances some hitherto neglected areas of fashion studies, including the nature and role of masculinity in fashion and non-marxist approaches to production and consumption.\" - Malcolm Barnard, Loughborough University Tim Edwards is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leicester. He has published and researched widely in the areas of masculinities, sexuality, fashion and consumer culture. He is the author of Cultures of Masculinity (2006). 1. Fashion Foundations 2. The Classical Tradition – Early Perspectives on Fashion 3. The Clothes Maketh The Man – Masculinity, The Suit and Men’s Fashion 4. The Woman Question: Fashion, Feminism and Fetishism 5. Who Are You Kidding? Children, Fashion and Consumption 6. Express Yourself – The Politics of Dressing Up 7. From Rags to Riches – Fashion Production 8. Desiring Subjects – The Designer Label and the Cult of Celebrity. Conclusion: The Fashion Invasion

Blurb: From Rococo to Edwardian fashions, Japanese street style has reinvented many western dress styles, reinterpreting and altering their meanings and messages in a different cultural and historical context. This wide ranging and original study reveals the complex exchange of styles and what they represent in Japan and beyond, contesting common perceptions of gender in Japanese dress and the notion that non-western fashions simply imitate western styles. Through case studies focussing on fashion image consumption in style tribes such as Kamikaze Girls, Lolita, Edwardian, Ivy Style, Victorian, Romantic and Kawaii, this ground-breaking book investigates the complexities of dress and gender and demonstrates the flexible nature of contemporary fashion and style exchange in a global context. Japanese Fashion Cultures will appeal to students and scholars of fashion, cultural studies, gender studies, media studies and related fields.

The kimono is an iconic garment with a history as rich and colourful as the textiles from which it is crafted. Deeply associated with Japanese culture both past and present, it has often been thought of as a highly gendered, rigidly traditional, and unchanging national costume. This book challenges that perception, revealing the nuanced meanings and messages behind the kimono from the point of view of its wearers and producers, many of whom – both men and women – see the garment as a vehicle for self-expression. Taking a material culture approach, The Social Life of Kimono is the first study to combine the history of the kimono as a fashionable garment with an in-depth exploration of its multifaceted role today on both the street and the catwalk. Through case studies covering historical advertising campaigns, fashion magazines, interviews with contemporary kimono designers, large scale and small craft producers, and consumers who choose to wear them, The Social Life of Kimono gives a unique insight into making and meaning of this complex garment.

Collecting the perspectives of scholars who reflect on their own relationships to particular garments, analyze the politics of dress, and examine the role of consumerism and entrepreneurialism in the production of creating and selling a style, meXicana Fashions examines and searches for meaning in these visible, performative aspects of identity. Focusing primarily on Chicanas but also considering trends connected to other Latin American communities, the authors highlight specific constituencies that are defined by region (“Tejana style,\" “L.A. style\"), age group (“homie,\" “chola\"), and social class (marked by haute couture labels such as Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta). The essays acknowledge the complex layers of these styles, which are not mutually exclusive but instead reflect a range of intersections in occupation, origin, personality, sexuality, and fads. Other elements include urban indigenous fashion shows, the shifting quinceañera market, “walking altars\" on the Days of the Dead, plus-size clothing, huipiles in the workplace, and dressing in drag. Together, these chapters illuminate the full array of messages woven into a vibrant social fabric.

ZOOT SUIT (n.): the ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit. -Cab Calloway,The Hepster's Dictionary, 1944 Before the fashion statements of hippies, punks, or hip-hop, there was the zoot suit, a striking urban look of the World War II era that captivated the imagination. Created by poor African American men and obscure tailors, the \"drape shape\" was embraced by Mexican American pachucos, working-class youth, entertainers, and swing dancers, yet condemned by the U.S. government as wasteful and unpatriotic in a time of war. The fashion became notorious when it appeared to trigger violence and disorder in Los Angeles in 1943-events forever known as the \"zoot suit riot.\" In its wake, social scientists, psychiatrists, journalists, and politicians all tried to explain the riddle of the zoot suit, transforming it into a multifaceted symbol: to some, a sign of social deviance and psychological disturbance, to others, a gesture of resistance against racial prejudice and discrimination. As controversy swirled at home, young men in other places-French zazous, South African tsotsi, Trinidadian saga boys, and Russian stiliagi-made the American zoot suit their own. InZoot Suit, historian Kathy Peiss explores this extreme fashion and its mysterious career during World War II and after, as it spread from Harlem across the United States and around the world. She traces the unfolding history of this style and its importance to the youth who adopted it as their uniform, and at the same time considers the way public figures, experts, political activists, and historians have interpreted it. This outré style was a turning point in the way we understand the meaning of clothing as an expression of social conditions and power relations. Zoot Suit offers a new perspective on youth culture and the politics of style, tracing the seam between fashion and social action.

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.

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).

Taking the concept of \"seamlessness\"as her starting point, Yeseung Lee offers an innovative practice-ased investigation into the meaning of the handmade in the age of technological revolution and globalized production and consumption. Combining firsthand experience of making seamless garments with references from psychoanalysis, anthropology, and cultural studies, Lee reveals the ways that a garment can reach to our deeply superficial sense of being, and how her seamless garments can represent the ambiguity of a modern subject in a perpetual process of becoming. Richly illustrated and firmly rooted in the actual work of creation, this daringly innovative book breaks new ground for fashion research.

Notorious as much for its fashion as for its music, the 1960s and 1970s produced provocative fashion trends that reflected the rising wave of gender politics and the sexual revolution. In an era when gender stereotypes were questioned and dismantled, and when the feminist and gay rights movements were gaining momentum and a voice, the fashion industry responded in kind. Designers from Paris to Hollywood imagined a future of equality and androgyny. The unisex movement affected all ages, with adult fashions trickling down to school-aged children and clothing for infants. Between 1965 and 1975, girls and women began wearing pants to school; boys enjoyed a brief \"peacock revolution,\" sporting bold colors and patterns; and legal battles were fought over hair style and length. However, with the advent of Diane Von Furstenberg's wrap dress and the launch of Victoria's Secret, by the mid-1980s, unisex styles were nearly completely abandoned. Jo B. Paoletti traces the trajectory of unisex fashion against the backdrop of the popular issues of the day-from contraception access to girls' participation in sports. Combing mass-market catalogs, newspaper and magazine articles, cartoons, and trade publications for signs of the fashion debates, Paoletti provides a multigenerational study of the \"white space\" between (or beyond) masculine and feminine.

This exhaustive book demonstrates how dress shapes and is shaped by social processes and phenomena such as beauty, time, the body, the gift exchange, class, gender, and religion. It does this through an analysis of topics like the Islamic clothing controversy in state schools, the multitude of identities associated with dress, the Dress Reform movement, the construction of the body in fashion magazines, and the role of the internet in fashion. What emerges is a trenchant, sharply observed account of the place of dress in contemporary society.