Fashion and Everyday Life: London and New York - Hardcover

Before the rise of Zara and H&M, people of modest means engaged with fashion. But how did they do it and what did it mean? Beautifully written and illustrated, this book provides new and engaging `fashion cross-sections' of two great cities, London and New York. How did Americans become `the best dressed' women in the world? What underpinned the rise of `ready-to-wear' in both London and New York? What role did fashion play in migration and assimilation? How does fashion relate to the everyday and how did it become the very essence of everyday life? Working, walking, shopping, church-going, dancing, wedding, clubbing and blogging - these and a great many other topics are examined in a work of thoughtfulness and imagination. The book sets a new benchmark in the study of dressing as an everyday but also exceptional practice, within and for lives. -- Peter McNeil, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Historically rigorous, well-written and accessible, Fashion and Everyday Life is an essential text for anyone researching, working, or studying in the field of fashion or dress design and history. Tracing the way in which ordinary people interpreted `high' and `low' trends and fashions to express marginalized identities, the book will inspire practitioners and academic students alike. Bringing together accounts of the complexity of ordinary women's lives in the urban fashion capitals of London and New York during the twentieth century, this authoritative work explores the creative use of dress across the dividing lines of age, gender, race and social class. -- Juliet Ash, Royal College of Art, London, UK

Taking cultural theorist Michel de Certeau's notion of `the everyday' as a critical starting point, this book considers how fashion shapes and is shaped by everyday life. Looking historically for the imprint of fashion within everyday routines such as going to work or shopping, or in leisure activities like dancing, the book identifies the `fashion system of the ordinary', in which clothing has a distinct role in the making of self and identity. Exploring the period from 1890 to 2010, the study is located in London and New York, cities that emerged as as socially, ethnically and culturally diverse, as well as increasingly fashionable. The book re-focuses fashion discourse away from well-trodden, power-laden dynamics, towards a re-evaluation of time, memory, and above all history, and their relationship to fashion and everyday life. The importance of place and space - and issues of gender, race and social class - provides the broader framework, revealing fashion as both routine and exceptional, and as an increasingly significant part of urban life. By focusing on key themes such as clothing the city, what is worn on the streets, the imagining and performing of multiple identities by dressing up and down, going out, and showing off, Fashion and Everyday Life makes a unique contribution to the literature of fashion studies, fashion history, cultural studies, and beyond.