Fashion and Modernity [Paperback]

Christopher Breward (Editor), Caroline Evans (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2005 | ISBN-10: 1845200284 | ISBN-13: 978-1845200282

This book tests the very definition of modernity and enhances our understanding of the role of fashion in the modern world. From top hats to locomotives, dresses to retail outlets, fashion is a prism through which modernity reflects and refracts. Breward and Evans bring together an organic collaboration of voices on this subject. The collection ranges from such topics as James Morrison (1789-1857), the Napoleon of Shopkeepers; to dress in the Stuart era; The Mannequin Parade, 1900-1925; and clothing the London actress (1860-1914). From the relationship between clothing and forensic sciences, to the play of performance, parasexuality, and the celebrity, Fashion and Modernity offers an enlightening look at fashion and the modern age.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Fashion and Modernity offers both the conceptual framework and the kind of 'thick' historical and contemporary analyses required to move forward a number of debates in fashion studies. The contributions to this remarkable volume generate a lively, interdisciplinary exchange of perspectives, individually and collectively putting to rest any semblance of a notion of modern, western fashion history as a seamless, linear narrative.' Susan Kaiser, Professor and Chair of the Division of Textiles and Clothing, University of California at Davis.

About the Author

Christopher Breward is Professor in Historical and Cultural Studies, London College of Fashion.

Caroline Evans is Reader in Fashion Studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Berg Publishers (March 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845200284
• ISBN-13: 978-1845200282
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Becky E. Conekin joined Yale in the Autumn of 2009. She holds a PhD in Modern European History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is currently Senior Research Fellow in European Studies at the Whitney & Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, as well as Senior Lecturer in History at Yale University. She also serves on the Council of the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. For the decade prior to arriving at Yale she taught at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, where she was Reader in Historical and Cultural Studies and for many years the Course Director of their MA in the History & Culture of Fashion. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and author of numerous publications including The Autobiography of a Nation: The 1951 Festival of Britain, and as co-editor, The Englishness of English Dress and Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain, 1945-1964, as well as the 10th anniversary issue of Fashion Theory dedicated to Vogue magazine. She is on the editorial board of the journals Contemporary British History and Photography & Culture. She has held fellowships and visiting professorships at the Center for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), the University of Cambridge; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; the Center for British Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin; The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and the International Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Becky E. Conekin has written extensively on the model-turned photographer-turned-war correspondent, Lee Miller. She is completing a book entitled Lee Miller in Fashion to be published by Thames and Hudson. Her current monographic project is funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust and tentatively entitled Pretty Hard Work: A History of Fashion Modelling in Post-war London & Paris. Her most recent articles have been published in the journals, Photography & Culture and Gastronomica.