Author: Kelly Olson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134121202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
In ancient Rome, the subtlest details in dress helped to distinguish between levels of social and moral hierarchy. Clothes were a key part of the sign systems of Roman civilization – a central aspect of its visual language, for women as well as men. This engaging book collects and examines artistic evidence and literary references to female clothing, cosmetics and ornament in Roman antiquity, deciphering their meaning and revealing what it meant to be an adorned woman in Roman society. Cosmetics, ornaments and fashion were often considered frivolous, wasteful or deceptive, which reflects ancient views about the nature of women. However, Kelly Olson uses literary evidence to argue that women often took pleasure in fashioning themselves, and many treated adornment as a significant activity, enjoying the social status, influence and power that it signified. This study makes an important contribution to our knowledge of Roman women and is essential reading for anyone interested in ancient Roman life.
Author: Peter Corrigan
Publisher: SAGE Publications Limited
ISBN: 9780761952077
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
This exhaustive book demonstrates how dress shapes and is shaped by social processes and phenomena such as beauty, time, the body, the gift exchange, class, gender, and religion. It does this through an analysis of topics like the Islamic clothing controversy in state schools, the multitude of identities associated with dress, the Dress Reform movement, the construction of the body in fashion magazines, and the role of the internet in fashion. What emerges is a trenchant, sharply observed account of the place of dress in contemporary society.
Author: T. F. Martin
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1785703188
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
While traditional studies of dress and jewellery have tended to focus purely on reconstruction or descriptions of style, chronology and typology, the social context of costume is now a major research area in archaeology. This refocusing is largely a result of the close relationship between dress and three currently popular topics: identity, bodies and material culture. Not only does dress constitute an important means by which people integrate and segregate to form group identities, but interactions between objects and bodies, quintessentially illustrated by dress, can also form the basis of much wider symbolic systems. Consequently, archaeological understandings of clothing shed light on some of the fundamental aspects of society, hence our intentionally unconditional title. Dress and Society illustrates the range of current archaeological approaches to dress using a number of case studies drawn from prehistoric to post-medieval Europe. Individually, each chapter makes a strong contribution in its own field whether through the discussion of new evidence or new approaches to classic material. Presenting the eight papers together creates a strong argument for a theoretically informed and integrated approach to dress as a specific category of archaeological evidence, emphasising that the study of dress not only draws openly on other disciplines, but is also a sub-discipline in its own right. However, rather than delimiting dress to a specialist area of research we seek to promote it as fundamental to any holistic archaeological understanding of past societies.
Author: Richard Thompson Ford
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501180088
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
A law professor and cultural critic offers an eye-opening exploration of the laws of fashion throughout history, from the middle ages to the present day, examining the canons, mores and customs of clothing rules that we often take for granted
Author: Jane Ashelford
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780707803364
Category : Clothing and dress
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The clothes worn by our ancestors afford an invaluable insight into lifestyles that have disappeared. Choice of dress at any point in time is determined by a number of factors, such as social and economic pressures, moral codes, technical advances, influence of designers and artisitc movements, and the vagaries of individual taste.
Author: Richard A. Wells
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Etiquette
Languages : en
Pages : 548
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Book Description
Author: Hilary Davidson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300218729
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
This beautifully illustrated book explores the rich complexity of Regency clothing through the lens of the collected writings of Jane Austen.
Author: Diana Crane
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226924831
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
It has long been said that clothes make the man (or woman), but is it still true today? If so, how has the information clothes convey changed over the years? Using a wide range of historical and contemporary materials, Diana Crane demonstrates how the social significance of clothing has been transformed. Crane compares nineteenth-century societies—France and the United States—where social class was the most salient aspect of social identity signified in clothing with late twentieth-century America, where lifestyle, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ethnicity are more meaningful to individuals in constructing their wardrobes. Today, clothes worn at work signify social class, but leisure clothes convey meanings ranging from trite to political. In today's multicode societies, clothes inhibit as well as facilitate communication between highly fragmented social groups. Crane extends her comparison by showing how nineteenth-century French designers created fashions that suited lifestyles of Paris elites but that were also widely adopted outside France. By contrast, today's designers operate in a global marketplace, shaped by television, film, and popular music. No longer confined to elites, trendsetters are drawn from many social groups, and most trends have short trajectories. To assess the impact of fashion on women, Crane uses voices of college-aged and middle-aged women who took part in focus groups. These discussions yield fascinating information about women's perceptions of female identity and sexuality in the fashion industry. An absorbing work, Fashion and Its Social Agendas stands out as a critical study of gender, fashion, and consumer culture. "Why do people dress the way they do? How does clothing contribute to a person's identity as a man or woman, as a white-collar professional or blue-collar worker, as a preppie, yuppie, or nerd? How is it that dress no longer denotes social class so much as lifestyle? . . . Intelligent and informative, [this] book proposes thoughtful answers to some of these questions."-Library Journal
Author: Shoshana-Rose Marzel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 147255809X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
Dress and fashion are powerful visual means of communicating ideology, whether political, social or religious. From the communist values of equality, simplicity and solidarity exemplified in the Mao suit to the myriad of fashion protests of feminists such as French revolutionary women's demand to wear trousers, dress can symbolize ideological orthodoxy as well as revolt. With contributions from a wide range of international scholars, this book presents the first scholarly analysis of dress and ideology through accessible case studies. Chapters are organized thematically and explore dress in relation to topics including nation, identity, religion, politics and utopias, across an impressive chronological reach from antiquity to the present day. Dress & Ideology will appeal to students and scholars of fashion, history, sociology, cultural studies, politics and gender studies.
Author: Karen Sternheimer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780393419481
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Innovative readings and blog posts show how sociology can help us understand everyday life.
