The fashion show and its spaces are sites of otherness, representing everything from rebellion and excess through to political and social activism. This conceptual and stylistic variety is reflected in the spaces they occupy, whether they are staged in an industrial warehouse, on a city street, or out in the open landscape. Staging Fashion is the first collection of essays about the presentation and staging of fashion in runway shows in the period from the 1960s to the 2010s. It offers a fresh perspective on the many collaborations between artists, architects and interior designers to reinforce their interdisciplinary links. Fashion, architecture and interiors share many elements, including design, history, material culture, aesthetics and trends. The research and ideas underpinning Staging Fashion address how fashion and the spatial fields have collaborated in the creation of the space of the fashion show. The 15 essays are written by fashion, interior, architecture and design scholars focusing on the presentation of fashion within the runway space, from avant-garde practices and collaboration with artists, to the most spectacular and commercial shows of recent years, from Prada to Chanel.

The fashion show and its spaces are sites of otherness, representing everything from rebellion and excess through to political and social activism. This conceptual and stylistic variety is reflected in the spaces they occupy, whether they are staged in an industrial warehouse, on a city street, or out in the open landscape. Staging Fashion is the first collection of essays about the presentation and staging of fashion in runway shows in the period from the 1960s to the 2010s. It offers a fresh perspective on the many collaborations between artists, architects and interior designers to reinforce their interdisciplinary links. Fashion, architecture and interiors share many elements, including design, history, material culture, aesthetics and trends. The research and ideas underpinning Staging Fashion address how fashion and the spatial fields have collaborated in the creation of the space of the fashion show. The 15 essays are written by fashion, interior, architecture and design scholars focusing on the presentation of fashion within the runway space, from avant-garde practices and collaboration with artists, to the most spectacular and commercial shows of recent years, from Prada to Chanel.

Catalog published in conjunction with the exhibition, Staging Fashion, 1880-1920: Jane Hading, Lily Elsie, Billie Burke, held at the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, from January 17, 2012, through April 8, 2012.

Christopher Hopkins first became known as “The Makeover Guy” during his two appearances in Oprah’s over-50 makeover shows. Since then, he has dedicated his talents and passion for fashion, makeup, and hair care to this booming audience of women. In Staging Your Comeback, Hopkins champions women over 45, teaching them how to command attention by looking and feeling great. With compassion and brutal honesty, Hopkins tackles and rectifies problems that women face as they age. Hopkins’s simple tips and tricks help women create their own self-expression and turnaround common mistakes they make in fashion and hair and skin care. Some topics include: Gray or nay? Your ideal hair color Working with over-40 skin Discover your image profile Second-act ground rules Your ideal silhouette When symmetry goes south Myths and misconceptions Long hair in act two: Does it work? Managing curl What you need to know about undergarments Fads, trends, and classics

'Fashioning the Self: Identity and Style in British Culture' offers an eclectic approach to contemporary fashion studies. Taking a broad definition of British culture, this collection of essays explores the significance of style to issues such as colonialism, race, gender and class, embracing topics as diverse as eighteenth-century portraiture, literary dress culture and Edwardian working-class glamour. Examining the emblematic power of garments themselves and the context in which they are styled, this work interrogates the ways that personal style can itself decontextualize garments to radically reframe their meanings. Using an intentionally eclectic range of subjects from an interdisciplinary perspective, this collection builds on the work of theorists such as Aileen Ribeiro, Vika Martina Plock, Cheryl Buckley and Hilary Fawcett, to examine the social significance of personal style, while also highlighting the diversity of British culture itself.

In American Fashion is the first scholarly analysis of the Fashion Calendar, the unique scheduling service and trade publication for the American fashion and creative industries between 1941 and 2014. Published by Ruth Finley for almost seven decades, the Calendar had an extensive impact on the development of the American fashion industry in the 20th century. Unlike European fashion capitals, the American fashion industry relied on an independent small publisher to manage the schedule of an ever-growing industry. In American Fashion shows how this independent position influenced the democratic approach reflected in the industry in the United States. Finley's unique contribution to the development of the time-system and culture of American fashion made her a key player during the ascendency of American fashion design. Natalie Nudell unveils the Fashion Calendar as a historical archive, and also looks at its development into an open-source digital humanities project (to be released in November 2023). Through historical analysis and the upcoming digitization of the Ruth Finley Collection, this study unpacks the history and impact of the publication and the women behind it.

After toppling the Ming dynasty, the Qing conquerors forced Han Chinese males to adopt Manchu hairstyle and clothing. Yet China’s new rulers tolerated the use of traditional Chinese attire in performances, making theater one of the only areas of life where Han garments could still be seen and where Manchu rule could be contested. Staging Personhood uncovers a hidden history of the Ming–Qing transition by exploring what it meant for the clothing of a deposed dynasty to survive onstage. Reading dramatic works against Qing sartorial regulations, Guojun Wang offers an interdisciplinary lens on the entanglements between Chinese drama and nascent Manchu rule in seventeenth-century China. He reveals not just how political and ethnic conflicts shaped theatrical costuming but also the ways costuming enabled different modes of identity negotiation during the dynastic transition. In case studies of theatrical texts and performances, Wang considers clothing and costumes as indices of changing ethnic and gender identities. He contends that theatrical costuming provided a productive way to reconnect bodies, clothes, and identities disrupted by political turmoil. Through careful attention to a variety of canonical and lesser-known plays, visual and performance records, and historical documents, Staging Personhood provides a pathbreaking perspective on the cultural dynamics of early Qing China.

The Handbook of Fashion Studies identifies an innovative spectrum of thematic approaches, key strands and interdisciplinary concepts that continue to push forward the boundaries of fashion studies. The book is divided into seven sections: Fashion, Identity and Difference; Spaces of Fashion; Fashion and Materiality; Fashion, Agency and Policy; Science, Technology and New fashion; Fashion and Time and, Sustainable Fashion in a Globalised world. Each section consists of approximately four essays authored by established researchers in the field from the UK, USA, Netherlands, Sweden, Canada and Australia. The essays are written by international subject specialists who each engage with their section's theme in the light of their own discipline and provide clear case-studies to further knowledge on fashion. This consistency provides clarity and permits comparative analysis. The handbook will be essential reading for students of fashion as well as professionals in the industry.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the production of dress shifted dramatically from being predominantly hand-crafted in small quantities to machine-manufactured in bulk. The increasing democratization of appearances made new fashions more widely available, but at the same time made the need to differentiate social rank seem more pressing. In this age of empire, the coding of class, gender and race was frequently negotiated through dress in complex ways, from fashionable dress which restricted or exaggerated the female body to liberating reform dress, from self-defining black dandies to the oppressions and resistances of slave dress. Richly illustrated with over 100 images and drawing on a plethora of visual, textual and object sources, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Empire presents essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations to illustrate the diversity and cultural significance of dress and fashion in the period.

Caroline Evans analyses the work of experimental designers, the images of fashion photographers, and the spectacular fashion shows that developed in the final decade of the twentieth century to arrive at a new understanding of fashion's dark side and what it signifies? Drawing on a variety of literary and theoretical perspectives - from Marx to Benjamin - Evans argues that fashion plays a leading role in constructing images and meanings during periods of rapid change. She shows persuasively that fashion stands at the very centre of the contemporary, where it voices some of Western culture's deepest concerns.