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This beautifully illustrated book conveys the centrality of costume to live performance. Finding associations between contemporary practices and historical manifestations, costume is explored in six thematic chapters, examining the transformative ritual of costuming; choruses as reflective of society; the grotesque, transgressive costume; the female sublime as emancipation; costume as sculptural art in motion; and the here-and-now as history. Viewing the material costume as a crucial aspect in the preparation, presentation, and reception of live performance, the book brings together costumed performances through history. These range from ancient Greece to modern experimental productions, from medieval theatre to modernist dance, from the “fashion plays” to contemporary Shakespeare, marking developments in both culture and performance. Revealing the relationship between dress, the body, and human existence, and acknowledging a global as well as an Anglo and Eurocentric perspective, this book shows costume’s ability to cross both geographical and disciplinary borders. Through it, we come to question the extent to which the material costume actually co-authors the performance itself, speaking of embodied histories, states of being, and never-before imagined futures, which come to life in the temporary space of the performance. With a contribution by Melissa Trimingham, University of Kent, UK.

Sustainable Fashion provides a unique and accessible overview of fashion ethics and sustainability issues of the past, present and future.This book is the first to situate today's eco-fashion movement in its multifaceted historical context, investigating the relationship between fashion and the environment as far back as the early nineteenth.

Sewing patterns have been the principle blueprint for making garments in the home for centuries. From their origins in the tailoring manuals of the 16th century to the widely produced pamphlets of the 18th and 19th centuries, through to the full size packet patterns of today, their history and development has reflected major changes in technology (such as the advent of the sewing machine), retailing and marketing practices (the fashion periodical), and shifts in social and cultural influences. This accessible book explores this history, outlining innovations in patternmaking by the companies who produced patterns and how these reflected the fashions and demands of the market. Showcasing beautiful illustrations from original pattern pamphlets, packets and ads, as well as 9 complete patterns from which readers can reproduce vintage garments of different eras, the book provides a unique visual guide to homemade fashions as well as essential exploration of the industry that produced them.

Are you a researcher struggling to mine and make sense of a mountain of fashion data?Are you interested in learning about how digital methods and tools could enhance your research?Have you thought about ways to spark and engage in academic conversations on social media?.

Since the dawn of western fashion in the Middle Ages, women's dress has never stopped evolving, yet menswear has seen far fewer style revolutions. At the centre of the male wardrobe is the suit: relatively unchanged since the 17th century, its cut and cloth suggest athleticism, seriousness, sexuality and strength – qualities which contrasted with the perceived superficiality and frivolity of female dress, and eventually led to the adoption of the suit into the female wardrobe where it remains to this day. In Sex and Suits brilliant essayist and art critic Anne Hollander charts the development of men's and women's fashion from their divergence in the medieval period to their convergence through to the late 20th century. Challenging the idea that the suit's success is merely down to its practicality, this trailblazing book argues that men have been fashion's true style-setters and that as women's fashion has taken on elements of men's style through tailoring, so men have reclaimed the embellishment and colour of past eras. First published in 1994 to great acclaim, this classic text is as fresh and provocative as ever and remains a must-read for students, scholars and anyone fascinated by the history of fashion and gender.

The rapidly increasing importance of technology integration and generative AI in the fashion industry is prompting changes in fashion design education. This study explored a new design methodology utilizing AI for sustainable and future-oriented fashion design education. The methodology involved consulting practitioners to select ChatGPT and Midjourney as AI tools and technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) as the theoretical framework. An AI prompt guide was developed based on specialized books, from which an educational program was created. An experiment with 30 third- and fourth-year fashion design students showed that their overall satisfaction with AI through TPACK was 4 out of 5, suggesting that TPACK enhances students’ creativity and efficiency through generative AI. Prompt guides received a satisfaction score of 4.7, indicating their usefulness for creative and efficient design outputs. AI-powered educational programs, like ChatGPT and Midjourney, also improved student creativity and learning efficiency, with ChatGPT scoring 4.5. However, concerns about technology dependency were noted. This study offers insights into integrating the latest technology into fashion design to improve process efficiency and creative output. This study not only provides a foundation for future research on AI design methodology but also explores practical directions for sustainable design in the fashion industry.

Costume design is a crucial, but frequently overlooked, aspect of film that fosters an appreciation of the diverse ways in which film and fashion enrich each other. These influential industries offer representations of ideas, values, and beliefs that shape and construct cultural identities. In Fashioning Spanish Cinema, Jorge Pérez analyses the use of clothing and fashion as costumes within Spanish cinema, paying particular attention to the significance of those costumes in relation to the visual styles and the narratives of the films. The author examines the links between costume analysis and other fields and theoretical frameworks such as fashion studies, the history of dress, celebrity studies, and gender and feminist studies. Fashioning Spanish Cinema looks at instances in which costumes are essential to shaping the public image of stars, such as Conchita Montenegro, Sara Montiel, Victoria Abril, and Penélope Cruz. Focusing on examples in which costumes have discursive autonomy, it explores how costumes engage with broader issues of identity and, relatedly, how costumes impact everyday practices and fashion trends beyond cinema. Drawing on case studies from multiple periods, films by contemporary directors and genres, and red-carpet events such as the Oscars and Goya Awards, Fashioning Spanish Cinema contributes a pivotal Spanish perspective to expanding interdisciplinary work on the intersections between film and fashion.

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.

Textile and fashion designers play a strategic role in sustainable development within the textile chain. Several studies highlight the decision-making role of designers, emphasizing how their choices influence the entire production sector. The aim of this research is to examine how design decisions within the Portuguese textile and fashion industry influence the implementation of sustainable development principles by exploring designers’ perceptions, practices, and the challenges they encounter throughout the design process. To achieve the proposed goal, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 designers from the industry. The collected data were qualitatively evaluated using NVivo software, highlighting the complexity of incorporating sustainability into the design process. The findings revealed that daily challenges are primarily related to fashion business models, greenwashing, limited knowledge of raw materials and finishing processes, cost constraints, lack of transparency and traceability in the supply chain, and low consumer awareness. By examining both the conceptual understanding and practical application of sustainability in the design process, this research provides strategic lines into designers’ decision-making processes, highlights barriers to sustainable practice, and underscores the importance of design education. The study contributes to academic debate and identifies opportunities for advancing sustainable practices and circularity in the textile and fashion industry, in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDGs 9, 12, and 13, to transform the current industrial and consumption models.

The first book to consider the subject, Wholesale Couture: London and Beyond, 1930-70 seeks to revise the notion that wholesale couturiers were simply copyists and demonstrate the complexities of their design processes and business strategies.