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How do you clothe a book? In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer. Probing the complex relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce, Lahiri delves into the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets and design have come to mean to her; and how, sometimes, “the covers become a part of me.”
Newly avilable in paperback, this major contribution to cultural history is a study of dress in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Daniel Roche discusses general approaches to the history of dress, locates the subject within current French historiography and uses a large sample of inventories to explore the differences between the various social classes in the amount they spent and the kind of clothes they wore. His essential argument is that there was a 'vestimentary revolution' in the later eighteenth century as all sections of the population became caught up in the world of fashion and fast-moving consumption.
The fashionable Finnish sewing duo are back with a second book that shows you how to create a coherent capsule wardrobe - complete with a collection of 20 garments that are easy to make, wear and combine. Complete with stunning photography, clear illustrations and instructions, Scandi sisters Laura and Saara offer up an enticing selection of tops, dresses, skirts, and trousers for the modern seamstress. Using the five essential building blocks, choose, customize and adapt the designs in this book to create a variety of flattering garments for every occasion that suit your style and fit your figure. Taking you beyond the patterns featured in this book, Building the Pattern offers expert advice on how to achieve the perfect fit, alter the designs and add your own personal twist. Discover how to create clothes with care, build your sewing repertoire and embrace the slow fashion movement. Six full-size pattern sheets are included in this neat package. The patterns are in a range of sizes from UK sizes 8 to 22 (US size 2 to 18 / 34 to 50 EUR sizes), with concise information on measuring yourself and technical sewing tips to sew for your shape.
This volume examines the dynamic relationship between the body, clothing, and identity in sub-Saharan Africa and raises questions that have previously been directed almost exclusively to a Western and urban context. Unusual in its treatment of the body surface as a critical frontier in the production and authentification of identity, Clothing and Difference shows how the body and its adornment have been used to construct and contest social and individual identities in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, and other African societies during both colonial and post-colonial times. Grounded in the insights of anthropology and history and influenced by developments in cultural studies, these essays...
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 leisur...
An astonishing number of medieval garments survive, more-or-less complete. Here the authors present 100 items, ranging from homely to princely. The book's wide-ranging introduction discusses the circumstances in which garments have survived to the present; sets and collections; constructional and decorative techniques; iconography; inscriptions on garments; style and fashion. Detailed descriptions and discussions explain technique and ornament, investigate alleged associations with famous people (many of them spurious) and demonstrate, even when there are no known associations, how a garment may reveal its own biography: a story that can include repair, remaking, recycling; burial, resurrection and veneration; accidental loss or deliberate deposition.
Examines the role of clothing in medieval society and discusses trends in clothing styles and the characteristic dress of different classes of people.
The basic concepts behind sizing systems currently used in the manufacture of ready-to-wear garments were originally developed in the 19th century. These systems are frequently based on outdated anthropometric data, they lack standard labelling, and they generally do not accommodate the wide variations of body sizes and proportions that exist in the population. However, major technological improvements have made new population data available worldwide, with the potential to affect the future of sizing in many ways. New developments in computer-aided design and sophisticated mathematical and statistical methods of categorizing different body shapes can also contribute to the development of mo...
For those seeking a slower, gentler way to make clothes, this book will serve as a guide to sewing clothing by hand -- without use of a sewing machine. Learn the techniques needed to stitch sturdy, modern adult clothing by hand. Ponder the bigger picture with several contextual essays, and then settle in for storytime, as you read a set of stories about hand-sewn clothes. Hand sewing clothing can be a radical act of slow fashion. Reclaim the democratic, accessible, ancient power of sewing that needs no machine.
Since the democratisation of the clothing industry in the early 19th century, buyers have become increasingly disconnected from the creative and human aspects of the production of clothing. Arguably clothing is now valued less for its aesthetic qualities or because of the hours spent in its making, but more for the extent to which it serves current 'fashion'. In a climate of increasing anxiety about the environmental and social impact of the contemporary global fashion industry, Rachel Worth suggests that, rather than seeking solutions only in the present, looking to history can assist in understanding better the challenges consumers face today in making decisions about the contents of their...