A lavishly illustrated, highly unusual take on fashion as viewed from all sorts of different angles.

When, how and why do clothes become fashion? Fashion is more than mere clothing. It is a moment of invention, a distillation of desire, a reflection of a zeitgeist. It is also a business relying on an intricate network of manufacture, marketing and retail. Fashion is both medium and message but it does not explain itself. It requires language and images for its global mediation. It develops from the prescience of the designer and is dependent on acceptance by observers and wearers alike. When Clothes Become Fashion explores the structures and strategies which underlie fashion innovation, how fashion is perceived and the point at which clothing is accepted or rejected as fashion. The book provides a clear theoretical framework for understanding the world of fashion - its aesthetic premises, plurality of styles, performative impulses, social qualities and economic conditions.

This book analyzes the complex interactions of body, mind and microelectronic technologies. Internationally renowned scholars look into the nature of the mind - a combination of thought, perception, emotion, will and imagination - as well as the ever-increasing impact and complexity of microelectronic technologies.

This book investigates how desires to transform our bodies can bring utopia to the present, and how utopian practices often lead to distinctly dystopian or anti-utopian outcomes. It is the first comprehensive study to address the paradoxical relationship between bodies and utopianism. Franziska Bork Petersen discusses doping, bodybuilding and cosmetic surgery alongside practices such as retouching the ‘body as image’ on social media, and looks at how fashion modelling and performance ‘estrange’ the body. Techniques and technologies to transform our bodies are increasingly accessible and suggest an excessive identification of the body as lacking. To ‘be a body’ in a culturally meaningful way, we incessantly improve our bodily appearance and capacity. The book therefore addresses the utopianism inherent in a cultural understanding of bodies as increasingly controllable.

Explores the role of women’s status, bodies, and sexuality in global conflicts. Women's bodies have become a battleground. Around the world, people argue about veiling, schooling for Afghan girls, and "SlutWalk" protests, all of which involve issues of women's sexuality and freedom. Globalization, with its emphasis on human rights and individuality, heats up these arguments. In Of Virgins and Martyrs, David Jacobson takes the reader on a fascinating tour of how self-identity developed throughout history and what individualism means for Muslim societies struggling to maintain a sense of honor in a globalized twenty-first century. Some patriarchal societies have come to see women’s control of their own sexuality as a threat to a way of life that goes back thousands of years. Many trace their lineage to tribal cultures that were organized around the idea that women’s virginity represents the honor of male relatives and the good of the community at large. Anyone or anything that influences women to the contrary is considered a corrupting and potentially calamitous force. Jacobson analyzes the connection between tribal patriarchy and Muslim radicalism through an innovative tool—the tribal patriarchy index. This index helps to illuminate why women's sexuality, dress, and image so compel militant Muslim outrage and sometimes violent action, revealing a deeper human story of how women's status defines competing moral visions of society and why this present clash is erupting with such ferocity.

Besides products and services multinational corporations also sell myths, values and immaterial goods. Such »meta-goods« (e.g. prestige, beauty, strength) are major selling points in the context of successful marketing and advertising. Fashion adverts draw on deeply rooted human values, ideals and desires such as values and symbols of social recognition, beautification and rejuvenation. Although the reference to such meta-goods is obvious to some consumers, their rootedness in philosophical theories of human nature is less apparent, even for the marketers and advertisers themselves. This book is of special interest for researchers and students in the fields of Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Marketing, Advertising, Fashion, Cultural Critique, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology and Psychology, and for anyone interested in the ways in which fashion operates.

Fashion is everywhere. It is one of the main ways in which we present ourselves to others, signaling what we want to communicate about our sexuality, wealth, professionalism, subcultural and political allegiances, social status, even our mood. It is also a global industry with huge economic, political and cultural impact on the lives of all of us who make, sell, wear or even just watch fashion.Fashion: the key concepts presents a clear introduction to the complex world of fashion. The aim throughout is to present a comprehensive but also accessible and provocative analysis. Readers will discover how the fashion industry is structured and how it thinks, the links between catwalk, celebrity branding, media promotion and mainstream retail, how clothes mean different things in different parts of the world, and how popular culture influences fashion and how fashion shapes global culture.Illustrated with a wealth of photographs, the text is further enlivened with over 30 detailed and rich case studies - ranging across topics as diverse as the meaning of black in fashion, the rise of celebrity branding, the cult of thinness, the politics of veiling, the eroticism of shoes and the power of cosmetics.Features:§ Boxed chapter overviews open each chapter§ Bullet points summarizing key ideas conclude each chapter§ Chapter discussions are illustrated with integrated case material§ Each chapter is supported by extended Case Studies§ Key words are highlighted in chapters and defined in an extensive Glossary§ Further Reading guides the reader to other literature§ A timeline of Fashion Milestones provides a chronology of major events in the history of fashion