Explores the increasing prominence of women in the fashion design and examines their contributions to twentieth-century fashion.

Celebrated and hidden figures from First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln's seamstress to Elsa Schiaparelli and Chromat revealed through their stories and most compelling works. Diane Von Furstenberg, Vivienne Westwood, Sarah Burton, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, Donna Karan, and Iris van Herpen are among the great women designers to emerge in the last few decades. We now live in an age when no one would dare call them "that little seamstress," as Paul Poiret disdainfully referred to Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel more than a century ago. The Women Who Revolutionized Fashion highlights early innovative and contemporary designers working in a variety of materials and genres. This unique volume profiles widely-known early fashion vanguards such as Jeanne Lanvin, Callot Soeurs, and Madeleine Vionnet, as well as underrepresented women who revolutionized fashion from the mid-1700s to the present. More than one hundred works--including street fashion, ready-to-wear, traditional, and haute couture--celebrate women designers' concepts of dress and beauty. Through the work of more than fifty individual style makers, The Women Who Revolutionized Fashion illuminates issues of representation, creativity, and distinctiveness, as well as the labor challenges surrounding fashion today.

There are many new looks in fashion; here, at last, is a new look at fashion which focuses on the perplexing relationship between women, fashion and femininity: It brings together fashion and semiotics, psychoanalysis and style, interweaving the vocabulary of fashion literature with that of cultural studies and feminist theory. Helmut Newton's flashing model is contrasted with Deborah Tuberville's models of passive resistence, Jean Paul Gaultier's Dervish Bra with Elsa Schiaparelli's Shoe Hat, the cultural terrorism of punk in the 1970s with the postmodern bedlam of fashion in the 1980s. Analysing fashion at a level of representation, concerned more with images and ideas than with cut and fit, the authors make a series of sorties into fashion photography, design and cultural history, with centre around women, their bodies, and the pleasures and pains of fashion. An examination of attitudes to fashion in the early Women's Liberation Movement is followed by an analysis of how femininity has been appropriated and re-appropriated by women in the urban styles and subcultures of the 1970s and 1980s.

This work focuses on the efforts toward reforming women's dress that took place in Europe and America in the latter half of the 18th century and the first decade of the 20th century, and the types of garments adopted by women to overcome the challenges posed by fashionable dress. It considers the many advocates for reform and examines their motives, their arguments for change, and how they promoted improvements in women's fashion. Though there was no single overarching dress reform movement, it reveals similarities among the arguments posed by diverse groups of reformers, including especially the equation of reform with an ideal image of improved health. Drawing on a variety of primary and secondary sources in the USA and Europe - including the popular press, advice books for women, allopathic and alternative medical literature, and books on aesthetics, art, health, and physical education - the text makes a significant contribution to costume studies, social history, and women's studies.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Women in Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities—famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old—on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives. It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. Writers, activists, and artists including Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Kalpona Akter, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Tavi Gevinson, Miranda July, Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, and Molly Ringwald answered these questions with photographs, interviews, personal testimonies, and illustrations. Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, or function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women’s style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.

A critique of the politics of dress for women in power. What is the relationship between fashion, women, and power? As never before, women in positions of political power find themselves facing the maelstroms of mass media regarding both their fashion and their right to govern. In this book, contributors offer a wide set of perspectives on women and their fashions when taking up powerful positions in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States as well as emerging women leaders in Asia. This book questions the relationship between women and dress and interrogates how this conversation informs and articulates how women are viewed when taking up public office. The book critiques the interplays between politics, power, class, race, and social expectations concerning the politics of getting dressed.

This book is the first in-depth exploration of the revolutionary designers who defined American fashion in its emerging years and helped build an industry with global impact, yet have been largely forgotten. Focusing on female designers, the authors reclaim a place in history for the women who created not only for celebrities and socialites, but for millions of fashion-conscious customers across the United States. From one of America's first couturiers, Jessie Franklin Turner, to Zelda Wynn Valdes, the book captures the lost histories of the luminaries who paved the way in the world of American fashion design. This fully illustrated collection takes us from Hollywood to Broadway, from sportswear to sustainable fashion, and explores important crossovers between film, theater, and fashion. Uncovering fascinating histories of the design pioneers we should know about, the book enlarges the prevailing narrative of fashion history and will be an important reference for fashion students, historians, costume curators, and fashion enthusiasts alike.

World War One had catastrophic impact on the lives of millions, both on the battlefield and on the Home Front too. It was also a time of tremendous social upheaval, bringing new opportunities and freedoms. Whatever their wartime role - as nurses, naval officers, factory workers or footballers - women needed the right clothes for the job. From the luxurious silks of High Society, to the boots and breeches of the Women’s Land Army, Fashion: Women in World War One explores the impact of war on fashion 1914-1918 with unique images and beautiful original garments.

Fashion is a powerful thing. It can be used for self-expression, to make a political statement, or simply to attract attention. Through this stunning collection, discover how these 50 trendsetters - from Twiggy to Wallis Simpson, Tilda Swinton to Michelle Obama - have used fashion to assert their position in the world and become iconic. With stunning photography selected by the Design Museum, in conjunction with Lauren Cochrane, Assistant Fashion Editor at the Guardian, Fifty Women's Fashion Icons is the perfect gift for design lovers and fashion followers of all ages.

A Matter of Style documents the unforgettable lives of ten female icons of style and elegance who revolutionized the concept of femininity, captivated entire generations, and remain inspiring models of beauty. An extraordinary collection of photographs brings these women back to life: Coco Chanel, Katharine Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, Mary Quant, Twiggy, and Lady Diana.