A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Modern Age Professor Alexandra Palmer (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada) 9781350204591

Over the last century there has been a complete transformation of the fashion system. The unitary top-down fashion cycle has been replaced by the pulsations of multiple and simultaneous styles, while the speed of global production and circulation has become ever faster and more complex. Running in tandem, the development of artificial fibres has revolutionized the composition of clothing, and the increased focus on youth, sexuality, and the body has radically changed its design. From the 1920s flapper dress to debates over the burkini, fashion has continued to be deeply involved in society's larger issues. Drawing on a wealth of visual, textual and object sources and illustrated with over 100 images, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Modern Age presents essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations to illustrate the diversity and cultural significance of dress and fashion in the period.

The definitive overview of dress and fashion in the modern age, this ground-breaking scholarly work presents the last hundred years of dress and fashion in culture and examines diverse topics such as textiles, production and distribution, the body, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations.

About the Author
Alexandra Palmer is the Nora E. Vaughan Fashion Costume Senior Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada. She also teaches at the University of Toronto.


Book Information
ISBN 9781350204591
Author Professor Alexandra Palmer
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Series The Cultural Histories Series
Weight(grams) 548g