The Cambridge History Of Fashion

Explores how the long history of fashion from antiquity to c. 1800 created global networks and animated world communities.

Examines the challenges of fashion from the nineteenth-century to the present day, from decolonisation to sustainability.

This captivating book reproduces arguably the most extraordinary primary source documents in fashion history. Providing a revealing window onto the Renaissance, they chronicle how style-conscious accountant Matthäus Schwarz and his son Veit Konrad experienced life through clothes, and climbed the social ladder through fastidious management of self-image. These bourgeois dandies' agenda resonates as powerfully today as it did in the sixteenth century: one has to dress to impress, and dress to impress they did. The Schwarzes recorded their sartorial triumphs as well as failures in life in a series of portraits by illuminists over 60 years, which have been comprehensively reproduced in full color for the first time. These exquisite illustrations are accompanied by the Schwarzes' fashion-focussed yet at times deeply personal captions, which render the pair the world's first fashion bloggers and pioneers of everyday portraiture. The First Book of Fashion demonstrates how dress – seemingly both ephemeral and trivial – is a potent tool in the right hands. Beyond this, it colorfully recaptures the experience of Renaissance life and reveals the importance of clothing to the aesthetics and every day culture of the period. Historians Ulinka Rublack's and Maria Hayward's insightful commentaries create an unparalleled portrait of sixteenth-century dress that is both strikingly modern and thorough in its description of a true Renaissance fashionista's wardrobe. This first English translation also includes a bespoke pattern by TONY award-winning costume designer and dress historian Jenny Tiramani, from which readers can recreate one of Schwarz's most elaborate and politically significant outfits.

Volume II surveys the history of fashion from the nineteenth-century to the present day. Covering the period beginning with mass industry and ending with calls for sustainability, this volume challenges the meaning of modernity and modernism from a global perspective and reflects on important scholarship that has changed our understanding of the relationship between fashion and colonialism. Empires shifted and new powers rose, with fashion marking and contending with this change. The volume concludes with a critical view of fashion and globalisation, and explores the deep connections between the fashion industry, the global economy, and the politics of production and wearing in the contemporary world.

"Split across two volumes, The Cambridge Global History of Fashion provides timely critical analyses of key topics and themes in the history of fashion, dress, and clothing. It foregrounds the trajectories of material and aesthetic transformation, as well as the thematic commonalities across time and space. Featuring over forty essays from experts across the field, the volumes unveil new perspectives on cultural, social, and economic change, and how these changes were expressed through fashion practice. The first volume presents a tight but comprehensive assessment of fashion from antiquity, through the early modern global era to c. 1800, engaging with colonial and imperial themes, as well as race and gender. The second volume advances the critique of 'modernity' from the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century, providing analyses of the impact globalisation had on contemporary dress. This global perspective stands as a landmark work in the history of fashion"--

Volume I surveys the long history of fashion from the ancient world to c. 1800. The volume seeks to answer fundamental questions on the origins of fashion, challenging Eurocentric explanations that the emergence of fashion was a European phenomenon and shows instead that fashion found early expressions across the globe well before the age of European colonialism and imperialism. It sheds light on how fashion was experienced in a multitude of ways depending on class, gender, and race, and despite geographical distance, fashion connected populations across the globe. Fashions flowered and were reseeded, through entanglements of empire, forced and voluntary migration, evolving racial systems, burgeoning sea travel and transcontinental systems.

"Split across two volumes, The Cambridge Global History of Fashion provides timely critical analyses of key topics and themes in the history of fashion, dress, and clothing. It foregrounds the trajectories of material and aesthetic transformation, as well as the thematic commonalities across time and space. Featuring over forty essays from experts across the field, the volumes unveil new perspectives on cultural, social, and economic change, and how these changes were expressed through fashion practice. The first volume presents a tight but comprehensive assessment of fashion from antiquity, through the early modern global era to c. 1800, engaging with colonial and imperial themes, as well as race and gender. The second volume advances the critique of 'modernity' from the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century, providing analyses of the impact globalisation had on contemporary dress. This global perspective stands as a landmark work in the history of fashion"--

Examines the extensive use of animal commodities in Victorian Britain and the humanitarian and ecological issues raised by their consumption.

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