The History of World Dress and Fashion presents a comprehensive survey of dress from around the world including China, Japan, India, Africa, the Islamic Empire, and the Ancient Americas. This extensive study features descriptions and analysis of men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, accessories, and cultural styles from prehistory into the twenty-first century. Lavishly illustrated in color throughout, it features more than 1600 images - and is a valuable resource for fashion designers, theater costumers, textile researchers, costume collectors and curators, and anyone interest in clothing and style customs of the world.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the production of dress shifted dramatically from being predominantly hand-crafted in small quantities to machine-manufactured in bulk. The increasing democratization of appearances made new fashions more widely available, but at the same time made the need to differentiate social rank seem more pressing. In this age of empire, the coding of class, gender and race was frequently negotiated through dress in complex ways, from fashionable dress which restricted or exaggerated the female body to liberating reform dress, from self-defining black dandies to the oppressions and resistances of slave dress. Richly illustrated with over 100 images and drawing on a plethora of visual, textual and object sources, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Empire 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.

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 The unitary top-down fashion cycle has been replaced by the pulsations of multiple and simultaneous styles, while the speed of global production and circulation has become ever faster and more complex.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 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.

This book is available as open access through the Knowledge Unlatched programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. "A remarkable resource for the field of fashion studies suitable for both newcomers ... {and] seasoned practitioners." - Fashion Historia "A precious source in the study of the subject ... inspiring." - The Journal of Dress History The last decade has seen the growing popularity and visibility of fashion as a cultural product, including its growing presence in museum exhibitions. This book explores the history of fashion displays, highlighting the continuity of past and present curatorial practices. Comparing and contrasting exhibitions from different museums and decades-from the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 to the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011, and beyond-it makes connections between museum fashion and the wider fashion industry. By critically analyzing trends in fashion exhibition practice over the 20th and early 21st centuries, Julia Petrov defines and describes the varied representations of historical fashion within British and North American museum exhibitions. Rooted in extensive archival research on exhibitions by global leaders in the field-from the Victoria and Albert and the Bath Fashion Museum to the Brooklyn and the Royal Ontario Museums-the work reveals how fashion exhibitions have been shaped by the values and anxieties associated with fashion more generally. Supplemented by parallel critical approaches, including museological theory, historiography, body theory, material culture, and visual studies, Fashion, History, Museums demonstrates that in an increasingly corporate and mass-mediated world, fashion exhibitions must be analysed in a comparative and global context. Richly illustrated with 70 images, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion history and museology, as well as curators, conservators, and exhibition designers.