UNDERSTANDING FASHION HISTORY

A much-needed overview of aspects of fashion history and how to understand it with clear, jargon-free text to help all lay readers, collectors, as well as students of fashion history. The author is a leading authority on fashion history with experience as a writer, teacher and curator. Illustrated throughout with plates, photographs, paintings and drawings, the book is divided up into the following chapters: • What is dress, and how and why is it studied? • Theories of dress and fashion and how they have evolved • Collections of dress and textiles and their importance as a source of information about social and technological change• Dress in art and dress as art • Dress as an indicator of role and status • Dress and cultural imperialism: absorption of non-Western ideas in fabric and the imposition of Western dress in preference to indigenous styles