The first in the four-part series Habits of Being , charting the social, cultural, and political expression of clothing as seen on the street and in museums, in films and literature, and in advertisements and magazines, this volume features a close-up focus on accessories--the shoe, the hat, the necklace--intimately connected to the body. br These essays, most of which have appeared in the cutting-edge Italian series Abito e Identit , offer new theoretical and historical takes on the role of clothing, dress, and accessories in the construction of the modern subject. With contributions by leading scholars in art history, semiotics, literary and film studies, h ..

Clothing may not make the man (or woman), but it helps. How clothing as a vestige and artifact and as transmitter of identity moves from one use to another, from one fantasy to another fad, from one literary source to another visual one: these are the concerns of the essays in this volume. The second in a four-part series charting the social, cultural, and political expression of clothing, dress, and accessories, Exchanging Clothes focuses on the concept of transnational "circulation and exchange"--not only the global exchange of material commodities across time and space but also of the ideas, images, colors, and textures related to fashion. Essays examine th ..

In nineteenth-century Europe and the United States, fashion--once the province of the well-to-do--began to make its way across class lines. At once a democratizing influence and a means of maintaining distinctions, gaps in time remained between what the upper classes wore and what the lower classes later copied. And toward the end of the century, style also moved from the streets to the parlor. The third in a four-part series charting the social, cultural, and political expression of clothing, dress, and accessories, Fashioning the Nineteenth Century focuses on this transformative period in an effort to show how certain items of apparel acquired the status of ..

This final volume in the four-volume series Habits of Being shows how the dialectic between everyday appearance and outrageous acts is mediated through clothing and accessories. It considers how clothing and accessories can move quickly from the ordinary to the extravagant. Employing many different approaches, these essays explore how wearing an object--a crown, a flower, an earring, a corsage, a veil, even a length of material--can stray beyond the bounds of the body on which it is placed into the discrepant territory of flagrantly excessive public signs of love, status, honor, prestige, power, desire, and display. The varied contributions of scholars (histor ..