Dress History: New Directions in Theory and Practice

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Description

The field of dress history has experienced exponential growth over the past two decades. This in-depth investigation examines the expanding borders and porous boundaries of the discipline today, outlining key debates and showcasing the most exciting research. With international case studies from a wide range of scholars, the volume encompasses work from a variety of historical periods from the late 18th century to the present day. Contributors examine, critique and expand the methodologies and sources used in fashion history, analyse how dress is collected, displayed and sold, and investigate clothings meanings and uses in the practice of identity. Exploring overlooked territories and new approaches to analysis, the book offers students and scholars a fresh appraisal of dress history in the 21st century.

Reviews

Students of dress history will benefit from reading this book from cover to cover. Each chapter provides insight into fascinating topics, while as a whole the book is a solid illustration of how different approaches within dress history rub alongside, borrow from and bounce off one another; it leads by example encouraging readers to be brave apply multi-source and material culture enquiry, embrace a broad mind-set, and bring new methods to their subject ... This book supports and promotes a continuation of dress historians as passionate, rigorous and all-embracing scholars. * Costume *
This important collection breaks through familiar boundaries of writings on dress in terms of time and place and with an admirable diversity of approach. Focused studies offer insights on topics that, thanks to their specificity, paradoxically enlarge the sphere of knowledge of dress. It is excellent for students; each chapter serves as a model of exemplary scholarship conveyed in authoritative but very readable language. * Nancy B. Deihl, New York University, USA *
Dress History: New Directions in Theory and Practice is an engaging collection of essays that address the etymology and methodology of the burgeoning field of dress history. This book is a must read for all fashion and dress historians. * Clare Sauro, Drexel University, USA *
This study of dress, from many points of view, serves to acknowledge the contribution and application of object study to the cultural understanding of dress. * Jean L. Druesedow, Director of Kent State University Museum, USA *
This book, edited by Pollen and Nicklas, eminent scholars of dress and appearance theory and history, powerfully argues that the fields maturity has delineated a new position for the field, one far from the borders of scholarship. It provides new research and methods, and importantly the book defines multiple avenues for the fields further forward movement. It features case studies of marginal and silent areas of dress history, examines the critical role of interdisciplinarity, and with brilliant clarity stakes a claim for the fields centrality to humanistic studies. For scholars and serious students of dress and appearance theory and history, this book is a must read. * Abby Lillethun, Montclair State University, USA *

Author Bio

Charlotte Nicklas is Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton, UK Annebella Pollen is Principal Lecturer in History of Art and Design and Director of Historical and Critical Studies at the University of Brighton, UK