This qualifying paper explores the role that fashion played in the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadow in Queens, New York. How was fashion integrated into the development and design of the fair? Did the attempt to include fashion differ between the fashion industry and other industries present at the fair? With international representation, did involvement differ between countries present at the fair? What role – if any – did American fashion designers have at the fair? To answer these questions, I examined the New York Public Library World’s Fair archive extensively, as well as other historical collections. The results are presented in the form of an exhibition proposal, an interpretive plan that could be used in future to share these important primary source documents, mainly photographs, with a wider audience. This rich resource of materials has not yet been exhibited or seen by the public, aside from individual researchers accessing the collection. I believe that using an object-based approach with accompanying didactics allows an accessible entry point into the many sociopolitical, economic and fashion historical context surrounding each object. I found that the official themes for each year of the fair – The World of Tomorrow (1939) and For Peace and Freedom (1940) - doubled as undercurrent themes found in the incorporation of fashion in the fair over both years. Therefore, I organized the two main sections of the exhibition under those titles. The last section playfully explores fashion in fair merchandising and the press, paralleling as a virtual “exit through the gift shop” for exhibition attendees.

This unique four-volume encyclopedia examines the historical significance of fashion trends, revealing the social and cultural connections of clothing from the precolonial times to the present day. This sweeping overview of fashion and apparel covers several centuries of American history as seen through the lens of the clothes we wear—from the Native American moccasin to Manolo Blahnik's contribution to stiletto heels. Through four detailed volumes, this work delves into what people wore in various periods in our country's past and why—from hand-crafted family garments in the 1600s, to the rough clothing of slaves, to the sophisticated textile designs of the 21st century. More than 100 fashion experts and clothing historians pay tribute to the most notable garments, accessories, and people comprising design and fashion. The four volumes contain more than 800 alphabetical entries, with each volume representing a different era. Content includes fascinating information such as that beginning in 1619 through 1654, every man in Virginia was required to plant a number of mulberry trees to support the silk industry in England; what is known about the clothing of enslaved African Americans; and that there were regulations placed on clothing design during World War II. The set also includes color inserts that better communicate the visual impact of clothing and fashion across eras.

" . . . Ultimately, more than 10 million visitors engaged with American fashion at the New York World's Fair 1939-40, crystallizing a collective consciousness around American fashion and individual designers that fostered success of American fashion in the years that followed. In exploring fashion at the New York World's Fair 1939-40, this dissertation brings attention to a subject that has been largely ignored by scholars. Today, the New York World's Fair 1939-40 is best remembered for the streamlined industrial design aesthetic and the ascendant role of private corporations in creating a future vision of American consumerism. Scholarship around the New York World's Fair 1939-1940 has centered on the activities of men, especially the work of male industrial designers who were engaged to create the conceptual and aesthetic look of the Fair. Fashion at the New York World's Fair is the story about women's achievements and has been ignored. This dissertation centers gender as a factor in the early challenges that surrounded planning for fashion at the New York World's Fair 1939-40 and recovers the contributions of Marcia Conner and Mary Lewis in launching American fashion at the New York World's Fair 1939-1940. In addition, this dissertation creates a framework for understanding how the New York World's Fair 1939-1940 functioned as a crucible for collective consciousness around the American fashion and its individual designers that secured validation in the eyes of the public"-- from Abstract.

The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair was the largest international exhibition ever built in the United States. More than one hundred fifty pavilions and exhibits spread over six hundred forty-six acres helped the fair live up to its reputation as "the Billion-Dollar Fair." With the cold war in full swing, the fair offered visitors a refreshingly positive view of the future, mirroring the official theme: Peace through Understanding. Guests could travel back in time through a display of full-sized dinosaurs, or look into a future where underwater hotels and flying cars were commonplace. They could enjoy Walt Disney's popular shows, or study actual spacecraft flown in orbit. More than fifty-one million guests visited the fair before it closed forever in 1965. The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair captures the history of this event through vintage photographs, published here for the first time.

A new look for Austerity...The coldest winter on record, rationing, successive economic crises, bombed out towns and cities; with some justification 'Austerity Britain' in the late 1940s is coloured in the popular imagination in tones of drab. Dressing for Austerity shines a light on alternative visions of post-war optimism and aspiration. It traces how, set against the Labour government's philosophy of 'Austerity by design' in a climate of post-war idealism, the desire for affordable fashionable clothing, access to leisure, and the health, time and money to enjoy them became totemic symbols of post-war ambition that impelled new strategies of state control and consumer agency. The book examines the immediate post-war period - its politics, its fashions and its people - in new ways and on its own terms as a critical tipping point in the making of modern Britain.