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To produce this exhibition, the PEM partnered with the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts is the oldest continually operating museum in the United States.[1] Created from a merger of the Peabody Museum of Salem and the Essex Institute, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) reflects its two-hundred-year history with an extraordinary collection of art, including maritime, American, Asian, Oceanic, and African. PHOTO (COLOR): Figure 1 Gallery view "Breaking In", exhibition, Made It: The Women Who Revolutionized Fashion, 2020. [Extracted from the article]

At the turn of the twentieth century in Toronto, articles in local newspapers and magazines exposed women to disparate views on corsets. On one side of the argument were dress reformers who advised women to do away with corsetry for the sake of their health and wellbeing. On the other side, were fashion journalists who advised them about current styles, which often oscillated from year-to-year. Despite this disparity, corsets were an ever-present foundation of nineteenth century fashion, to the extent that they were a frequent, sexy addition to crime reporting. The exaggerated stories in the media subjected women to a tug-of-war over their body autonomy. This article is based on content analyses of periodicals and exposes how corsets were presented in Toronto periodicals such as The Toronto Star, The Globe, and The Canadian Dried Goods Review, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author and diarist Anaïs Nin was an important figure in feminist literary circles in the 1960s and 1970s. Her diaries, first published in the 1960s, began with her life in France in the early 1930s. The wife of a banker, she lived a comfortable life, free to pursue her writing and bohemian living, including writing extensively on her use of dress to distinguish herself. This report presents the first in-depth examination of Nin's 1930s diaries and related primary sources from the perspective of dress history and calls for further research into the dress practices of this important literary figure of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article has a double focus: explaining the so-far obscure origins of children's fashion in the later eighteenth century and putting its emergence in the context of the 'grand narrative' concerning the 'discovery of childhood' during this pivotal period. Contrary to Rousseau's famous dismissal of the hussar suit, the role of 'fancy dress' inspiration in the development of children's fashions for the first time purposefully meant to distinguish the (male) child from the grown-ups and, concurrent with the Enlightenment's ideas on childhood, emerges as central rather than marginal. The repertory of styles adopted for boys' wear is shown to have been inspired by various ethnic and historical dress traditions rooted in the fascination with masquerade characteristic of the Rococo culture but harnessed to express the emerging new attitudes. Among them, special attention is given to inspirations by Polish national dress. Second, the article takes on the argument presented by Daniel Thomas Cookin his inspiring article in Textile History, 42, no. 1 (2011). Having acknowledged the foundational role of fashion history in the emergence of childhood studies, Cook regards its present status as peripheral. He dismisses the underlying premise of its principal 'grand narrative' as based on a fruitless distinction between utility (and functionality) and fashion rather than the invention or discovery of the 'child' and 'childhood'. While partially accepting Cook's criticism, the article argues that the 'grand narrative', thus modified and expanded, retains its usefulness. In the nineteenth century, the 'fancy dress' and 'playfulness' theme continued, reflected in the most popular children's styles (sailor suit, Little Lord Fauntleroy suit) and a range of others, temporarily or locally prominent, and intertwining with multifarious cultural, artistic, social and commercial developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The double portrait of Mary Tudor, sister of King Henry VIII of England, and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, has traditionally been dated to 1515. This attribution has led the portrait to be widely regarded as the earliest depiction of the style of headdress known as a French hood being worn by a member of the English court. However, the date of 1515 does not take into account the circumstances surrounding the marriage of the two sitters, circumstances that would have prevented the portrait from being commissioned at this time. It also ignores features of the sitters' attire, which display elements of later 1530s fashions. Using both documentary and pictorial evidence, this paper will seek to propose a later creation date of 1532, establish a different reading of the portrait and reassess our understanding of the French hood at the English court in the early sixteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early eighteenth century, the Duchess of Queensberry arrived at the Bath Assembly wearing a white apron, only to have it torn from her person by a Master of Ceremonies who declared that only a lady's maid would appear dressed so. This article looks at the apron as a garment worn by elite women in eighteenth-century England in order to consider some of the questions raised by this encounter. Aprons were closely linked with the labouring classes in contemporary representation, and elite women wearing them were therefore accused of imitating the dress and behaviours of their inferiors. While emulation from below has received due attention from scholars, this apparent imitation from above remains underexplored. Elite women certainly did masquerade as country girls at times; however, the apron as an item of elite dress was not as transformative as contemporaries feared. Instead, it became subject to expectations and conventions governed by the rhythms of elite everyday life. Though the Duchess of Queensberry became infamous, elite women wearing aprons were most likely to provoke censure when they defied these conventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for an updated theoretical framework in fashion studies. It proposes that perspectives emphasizing the social role and the technological nature of dress should be considered complementary, and that their joint application can contribute to new understandings of fashion history. Employing ethnographic methods, this stance is explored through a comparative analysis of the sartorial practices of two groups of women living or working in Amsterdam during the 1950s and the 2010s. A theoretical framework integrating theories of identity (mainly based on the writings of Georg Simmel and Gabriel Tarde) and the philosophy of technology (in this case the device paradigm of Albert Borgmann) allows us to uncover a paradoxical history of fashion in which clothing shifts roles, transforming from “things of imitation” into “devices of differentiation.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'bloomers' are rarely considered beyond their 1851 origins in the United States and subsequent appearance in Britain. This article expands dress reform scholarship by analysing print culture elsewhere in the British world, specifically Australia and New Zealand. The colonial press manufactured controversy over this fashion - a perceived transgression of gender norms - even though antipodean women rarely sported the outfit. This article focuses on the dress reform lectures and writings of Amelia Bloomer, Caroline Dexter and Dr Mary Walker. While certain continuities resurfaced alongside the bloomer-like rational dress popularised in the bicycling culture of the 1890s, dress reform was largely deemed far less controversial by the turn of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Localised in townships across South Africa’s Gauteng province,skhothaneemerged during the early 2010s as a cult of status characterised by a style of flashy, branded dress. Forizikhothane(the adherents of skhothane), surface is power. This emphasis on surface and visibility reveals much about the process of identity fabrication among township youth, positioning the trend not so much as a subculture but rather as a performative aesthetic existing in a continuum of style that includes, but is not limited to,pantsula,umswenko, andamakrwalacultural practices. This continuum might also be seen to function like technology, positioning the skhothane aesthetic as an intertext of recurrent sartorial quotation which can be used as a platform for imaginative speculation. Skhothane creates a highly visible entanglement with the ideation of the “African modern” (Nuttall and Mbembe.Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis.Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008), producing connections between township and late-capitalist metropolis that are not based on the historical one-way transfer of labour, but rather on complex interconnectivity between Johannesburg and its edges, the city and its inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The grave of La Balance-Ilot P, in Avignon, southern France, is an individual and isolated burial, attributed in the 1970′s to the Mesolithic or the Early Neolithic. The grave, partially unearthed, was exhibited and stored at the Calvet Museum until its rediscovery and laboratory excavation in 2009. We used 3D laser recording and field anthropological methods, followed by a multidisciplinary approach. The deceased, an adult male, was buried in primary deposition without any architectural features preserved. For the first time in the Mediterranean early Neolithic, this study led to the identification of a garment adorned with sophisticated embroidery using 158 red-coloredColumbella rusticashells and 16 red deer canines. Calibrated AMS dates allow us to reliably place it in the early 5th millenniumb.c. reinforcing evidence for long distance intercultural relationships in Europe during the Neolithic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about the clothing of country gentlemen in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century England. It begins with an exploration of the London-centric depiction in popular literature of country gentlemen as old fashioned in their manners, dress and lifestyle. It then explores the main elements of male fashion and the role of London in creating and disseminating it. Drawing on surviving clothing accounts, it subsequently offers a detailed analysis of what a number of country gentlemen were wearing during this period, exploring the extent to which they participated in London's fashion culture and their preferences for London-bought clothing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article unpacks the historical meanings of an important lace dress, one made for Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (1717–1780) and represented in two prominent paintings by her court portraitist Martin van Meytens. After examining the dress’s history and the circumstances of its production and reception, the article turns to the question of lace’s materiality, which it approaches through concepts derived from recent scholarship in material culture studies. This approach defines the dress less as a dazzling garment and more as a material product, as a thing with specific physical characteristics that interact with a range of conceptual ones. By examining how this dress was made and the implications of that making on its representation, the article seeks to enrich our interpretive results beyond what recent theories of fashion or identity alone would permit. Reaching those results requires thinking extensively about the making of lace, and indeed how lace’s materiality—its ontological status within the materiality of eighteenth-century society—can be theorized to generate meanings from it. The article then traces the lace’s post-garment history, locating at least three fragments that either repurpose parts of it or mimic the appearance of the original. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses contemporary perceptions of the Victorian draper. While neglected in academic literature, drapers were central to the public imagination, facing criticism for dishonesty in trade and condemnation for taking advantage of the vulnerable female shopper. Placing the focus firmly on the purchase of material goods, rather than shopping as a visual experience, the article argues that, while there was some truth in the negative characterisations, drapers operated in an industry that was rife with fraud and adulteration, made possible by an unregulated market. A strong belief in laissez-faire meant that individual failings were highlighted and condemned, without confronting the failings of the free market itself. The drapers’ own response was to provide an alternative portrayal of themselves, as ministering to women and serving them in an almost religious capacity. They, too, for the most part ranged themselves firmly against regulation, despite the harm that a free market did to their trade and the assaults on their character that resulted. As a consequence, both the public and the draper continued to suffer at the hands of an unregulated market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Starting from the significance of the visual for the creation of distinction in early modern Europe, the article investigates the everyday practices of eyeing, inspecting and scrutinizing other people's dress and personal possessions. In that, it addresses the ways of seeing (rather than the ways of displaying) that were at the root of managing appearances and that formed a significant part of the urban experience. Cases are drawn from everyday visual practices among the lower orders in early modern Stockholm. The article argues that a discerning eye that inspected people and their material goods played an integral part in distinguishing respectability and honour in the city - a way of seeing that was very different from the overview and order sought by city authorities. Therefore, these visual and material practices were part of ordering the social in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the cultural significance of the stocking as an essential accessory of an eighteenth-century man's attire. Rooted in a material understanding of the stocking through extant garments and archival accounts, this discussion broadens to consider the stocking as a form of cultural currency that spanned visual and popular culture in the eighteenth century. An analysis of the stocking's visual representation in painted portraiture and graphic satire reveals how it acted as a barometer for British masculinity and subsequently as a visual indicator for the health of the nation, which directly correlated with the stocking's position and pattern of wear on the leg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of insanity and its historical antecedents have paid very little attention to personal and institutional clothing. Such dress, distributed to patients in mental institutions, has always been inscribed with the conflicting narratives of the period in which it was made and worn. The language of civil and medical authority is more evident than personal choice in the shape and address of the attire. This article examines clothing worn by patients in three Devon mental hospitals during the century before 1960. We consider the ways in which institutional clothing formed part of a hospital regimen of overt control, as well as suiting considerations of economy and employment that figured in these institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the website "The Australian Dress Register" (ADR) from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, located at www.australiandressregister.org, as well as the exhibitions "Elizabeth I and Her People" on view at the British National Portrait Gallery from October 10, 2013 to January 5, 2014 and "Artist Textiles: Picasso to Warhol" on view at the Fashion and Textile Museum from January 31 to May 17, 2014.

Sumptuary law in early modern England has been described as unenforced, subject to systematic non-compliance, and ultimately legally inconsequential. A return to the original texts of the Acts to examine the language and form of the legal preambles suggests that another explanation might be available. Studies of surviving artefacts and information from wills and inventories suggest that the trend among the populace was toward compliance, rather than unprosecuted violation. Through to the mid-sixteenth century, when petition-driven statutes were replaced by royal proclamation, the Acts were continually refined and made more precise, closing legal loopholes that were being exploited. Records of ownership, in the form of wills and probate inventories, show minimal signs of violation of the sumptuary laws, although more do appear the higher one looks in the ranks of the nobility. When the sumptuary laws were violated, some prosecutions and fines were levied, and records from the Star Chamber, Chancery Court and Hall’s Chronicle all detail instances of punishment for violators. While the small numbers and limited descriptions in wills and inventories make it problematic to frame too sweeping a statement regarding the ownership of offending items, the combination of signs of enforcement, material evidence matching the legal requirements and the boilerplate nature of the wording of the petitions and statutes give new reason to re-evaluate our understanding of sumptuary law in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians have debated the significance of a group of late-seventeenth-century French engravings depicting fashionably dressed men and women. At question is the classification of these engravings as fashion prints, images which depict as well as disseminate current fashion information. An analysis of these French prints, which date from the mid-1670s to about 1715, reveals that although often imitative, details of dress and coiffure were continually altered in order to reflect new fashion trends. The print artists responded to current events by changing the captions of their prints, but the subject matter remained fundamentally a presentation of French fashion. Dress information was disseminated by the sheer volume of published French prints, as well as by additional foreign-made copies. The visualization of fashion presented in these prints makes clear their essential role in the fashion print genre, while their short-lived but robust production signaled an emerging hegemony of French fashion in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Chinese painted silks from the European export market. Particular focus is given to silks and textiles in the collection of the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London, England. Additional topics discussed include efforts to conserve items in the textile collection of the V&A, how many Chinese painted silks produced in the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth-centuries were designed to conform to European aesthetics, and information on an 18th century sack back gown and petticoat in the collection of the V&A.

This article explores the sartorial style of participants in a street-based youth subculture that thrived in late nineteenth-century Australian cities. Known as 'larrikins', the lower working-class youth so described had a distinctive style of dress including heeled boots and bell-bottomed trousers. Here we examine the material processes through which this larrikin look was produced, locating it in distinctive urban settings and placing it against a backdrop of nascent mass consumption. While also considering the cultural sources of inspiration for larrikin style, our key aim is to demonstrate the richness of an analysis attuned to materiality, preferring this to the semiotic approaches that dominate the relevant literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay describes the history of the gitana (gypsy) dress as worn by gypsies and by non-gypsies for portraiture, masquerade, and festivals from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. In addition essential accessories to the costume, the mantón de Manila or Spanish shawl, the pañuela or fichu, jewelry, head coverings, and shoes and stockings are also identified, described, and their symbolic use discussed. The article includes nine illustrations from the period of both gypsy and non-gypsy women wearing gitana dress. Changes over time in the form, use, and symbolic meaning are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A boy's suit of fawn wool sold by H. J. & D. Nicoll of London, dated c. 1860, in the Fashion Museum, Bath, raises a number of issues. Combining the long trousers worn by adolescents with a jacket associated with younger boys, it marks a turning point in age-related dress codes. Mass produced but with hand stitching, it presents evidence of the exploitative practices Nicoll had been charged with in Henry Mayhew's Morning Chronicle letters in 1850. The prominent labelling of the suit relates to Nicoll's publicity strategies and to the importance of boys' clothing for ready-to-wear retailers. A comparison of the suit with other surviving garments and with marketing documents illuminates the way that Nicoll positioned itself within the retail market. The rarity of this survival and the scarcity of information on a high-profile and long-lasting retailer make this an important case study for investigating the origins of the ready-to-wear clothing trade in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews several exhibitions including the online exhibition "Colouring the Nation" by the National Museums of Scotland available at: www.nms.ac.uk/turkey_red/colouring_the_nation.aspx; "Design Museum Collection: Extraordinary Stories about Ordinary Things" held at the Design Museum, London, England from January 2012 to January 2015; and "La Mécanique des Dessous, une Histoire Indiscrète de la Silhouette" [The Mechanics of Underpinnings: An Indiscrete History of Silhouettes], held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France from July 2013 to November 2013.

Louis XIV used his body as a political territory to strengthen the power of the State. On the contrary, Marie Antoinette used her body as a subjective territory to recuperate her autonomy. Through fashion, Marie Antoinette created a narrative program that expressed both her wish for recognition and her need for independence. This article reconstructs, from the perspective of the Semiotics of passion, Marie Antoinette's passionate journey as it is narrated by Sofia Coppola, showing how fashion allowed her to challenge the French court and expressed her subjectivity. By using the fashion system as a defensive strategy of legitimization, Marie Antoinette contributed to undermine the political structures that supported the aristocratic order. Simultaneously, she strengthened her individuality and confronted those who denied her recognition. From this perspective, Marie Antoinette appears as a contemporary character, as a subject other, a teenager, a foreigner, a woman who, in an inhospitable space, seeks beauty to construct a public image that expresses her identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates French women's dress during the reign of King Louis XVI of France, particularly focusing on changing fashion trends in the 1770s due to an increasing English influence on fashion. It addresses the popularization of simple garments intended to be more comfortable for the wearer in informal settings, as well as notes the presence of garments from this time period in dress collections. Other topics explored include the reduction in hoop petticoat size, the "Robe à la Polonaise," by Claude-Louis Desrais, and the enhancement of a slender waist.

In this article, the author examines the relationship between printed media and fashion. Particular focus is given to how the invention of print in the fifteenth century changed the visual culture of western Europe. Additional topics discussed include what printed broadsheet ballads reveal about clothing culture, animal imagery in early modern print culture and depictions of fashion in printed media, including fashion caricatures from England in the 18th-century.

The article examines printed pattern books for early modern bobbin-made borders and edgings. Particular focus is given to how these pattern books were often compilations of wood-cut printed pages with decorative designs to be used for embroidery, weaving and other crafts. Additional topics discussed include how the first known pattern book was printed in 1523 in Augsburg, Germany, insights on three pattern books for bobbin-made work printed between 1557-1561, and the use of bobbin-made borders in 16th-century clothing.

The article examines depictions of fashion in 18th-century Swedish print culture. Particular focus is given to the use of prints and engravings in this culture and to how these images spread throughout Europe. Additional topics discussed include the social role of fashion images, 18th-century fashion publications originating from France and images of hairstyles in 18th-century prints.

The article examines the life of Elisabeth Charlotte, Prinzessin von der Pfalz, a German princess and wife of Philippe d'Orléans, brother of King Louis XIV of France. Particular focus is given to how she was known in France as Madame. Additional topics discussed include her contributions to hunt dress and fashion in France, a portrait of Elisabeth Charlotte painted by Louis Ferdinand Elle, and insights on Elisabeth Charlotte's clothing and dress.

Piña cloth signaled the epitome of luxury, refinement, and wealth in nineteenth-century Philippines. Woven from the delicate threads of the fiber of the pineapple plant in a labor-intensive process that produced only half an inch a day in the nineteenth century to a meter a day today, it was a textile unique to the Philippines. This article analyzes the connections between cloth, dress, status, class, and national identity from the nineteenth-century Spanish colonial era to the present. It argues that piña was connected to the identity of the ilustrado class and links the decline of piña as "high fashion" with the rise of new elites with new dress and consumption practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article maps the looks and lifestyle choices of small groups of young, like-minded people who emerged in the postwar Soviet Union and East Europe in the background of huge political, social, and cultural changes. With their androgynous bodies wrapped in drape jackets and narrow trousers, and their love of jazz and swing, these young men stood in a sharp contrast to the official ideology that promoted socialism as a new, pure, and highly rationalized project, its ideal robust and strong man, and its mass culture that insisted on educational and restrained forms of entertainment. Through the categories of dress, body, and big city, the article investigates the clashes, and the eventual truce, between the socialist streamlined and rationalized master narrative and the young dandies' fragmented and disordered narrative. The article argues that the socialist dandies were not politically minded, and that their challenge to the officially proclaimed values was informed by their adolescent recklessness and a general postwar desolation. They were declared state enemies because the socialist regimes did not allow for alternative types of modernity. Consequently, the authorities condemned the young dandies' looks and interests as cosmopolitan, because they originated in the West, and as artificial, since they belonged to the culture that had preceded a new socialist world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information regarding three 2012 conferences on topics related to the history of textiles is presented. Conferences discussed include "Innovation Before the Modern: Cloth and Clothing in the Early Modern World" held at the University of Uppsala; "Bedtime Stories: Beds and Bedding in Britain 1650-1850" held at the Leeds Museums and Galleries and University of Leeds; and "Fashioning the Early Modern: Innovation and Creativity in Europe, 1500-1800," held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in Collaboration with Queen Mary, University of London.

This article examines British responses to changes in Japanese dress during the Victorian period. The disapproval of the Japanese adoption of European clothing is shown to be linked to British anxieties regarding their political relationship and cultural engagement with Japan. The ways in which the kimono served as a touchstone for the British understanding of the country, representing an unchanging and romanticised view of the cultural identity of its Japanese wearer, is also explored. However, the kimono did not only signal 'Japaneseness', but was assimilated in British fashion as well. This article further explores how the kimono was related to issues of late nineteenth-century dress reform in Britain as well as to British unease about the cultural changes that they themselves had experienced in the wake of industrialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets up and identifies certain needs that a soldier's clothing of this period had to satisfy, divided into the physical and psychological, as exemplified by the provision of warmth as well as identity. A consideration and analysis of the processes and systems of supply in place between 1645 and 1708 will follow in order to identify changes and developments in the way that the English Military man was clothed. The subsequent discussion of relevant objects alongside official clothing contracts and documents concerning supply will attempt to investigate the success or failure of these different supply systems according to their ability to satisfy the physical and psychological needs essential for a soldier to function successfully. Most notably, this paper will draw upon the unique examples of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century sealed pattern garments in the Armémuseum in Stockholm. These objects are both excellently preserved and illustrative of the process of manufacturing and storing exemplar garments for the army. As such they indicate the manner in which similar supply systems were developing across Europe. They also provide a rare example of the style and suit of clothing worn by a regular soldier, from the undershirt to the outer cloak, (c. 1750s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will present new data on corded skirts from Bronze Age Scandinavia, providing an opportunity to discuss variation within this clothing type and creativity in its production. In the past this has mainly been considered based on the fully preserved skirt found in the oak-log coffin buriat from Egtved, Denmark. This article includes the evidence of less well-preserved corded skirts to show that there is much more variation than previously thought in the way they were created. It is argued that this was an arena in which prehistoric textile craftspeople might show off their creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Nigeria, what is known as aso ebi has become one of the most powerful elements for understanding the city's sartorial practices and visual economy. Aso ebi is a common Yoruba phrase meaning, "uniformed solidarity dressing." In this article, I argue that, while aso ebi is a consequence of what I call Lagos cosmopolitanism, its fashioning is largely tied to a dialogue between photographers, fashion magazines, vendors, and tailors in urban Lagos. I demonstrate how the central facilitator of this mutuality resides in the fashion magazines. The article shows that while the language of aso ebi, both in its socializing message and dress codes, frames the notions of uniformity, the practice of copying enables the individuals to transcend the burdens imposed by aso ebi uniformity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently fashion exhibitions have been blossoming in Dutch museums to the extent that they verged on becoming a trendy phenomenon. Because of this upsurge in popularity we, as academic scholars, decided to devote a seminar to this subject in the context of the Master Museum Studies at the University of Amsterdam. The purpose of the seminar was to find out whether the popularity of museum fashion exhibitions had influenced the fashion collecting and presentation policies of the museums in recent years. The museums we studied staged a whole gamut of fashion exhibitions ranging from visual spectacles to community outreach projects. Although, these various fashion exhibitions cater to an increasingly diversified audience, they all have become attuned to the overall cultural environment audiences are living in, which is predominantly a visual culture of which the spectacular, the sensorial, and the participatory are key constituents. Dutch museums are very much in line with, even at the forefront of, museological movements that try to meet the challenges of the future. This is mainly due to the ever-growing influence of the neoliberal cultural policy on the one hand, to the open and experimental climate that has been pervading the Dutch museum world since the 1950s onwards on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the nineteenth century, in France, the UK, and the USA, there was a rapid development of ready-to-wear clothing and of its consumption. In this context, one phenomenon allows us to understand more fully the overall changes in attitudes toward fashion, clothing, and the body: the craze for rubber clothing from the beginning of the 1840s. This material appeared to be miraculous, and proved to be equally useful in underwear and in rainwear. Manufacturers dreamt about seamless garments and about totally adjustable pieces of clothing. Moreover, rubber clothing was thought of as hygienic, as it could be easily cleaned. From the 1850s to the late 1870s, rubber cloth conquered both public streets and intimate private life. But rubber was not only used in clothing. From the beginning, rubber was a material not only for outdoor clothes but also for orthopedics and for the enhancement of comfort. Mackintosh (UK), Goodyear and Roxbury India Rubber (USA), and Hutchinson and Rattier & Guibal (France) were the major manufacturers that produced rubber shoes, raincoats, collars, and cuffs, while orthopedists made corsets in order to straighten bodies, as well as hernial bandages, pessaries, belts against onanism, and other medical appliances. Rubber cloth hugged the intimate bourgeois body: corsets, garters, socks, and braces initially, and in the early 1880s, rubber condoms. In this way, rubber became the material of unproductive sexual pleasure. Over time, rubber clothing came to be regarded as shameful and disturbing. Around 1890, after the unprecedented craze for rubber, the bourgeoisie gave up their rubber clothes in public life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profession of fashion designer varies among the main fashion cities, and therefore has an eminently geographical rationale. Different conceptions of vestimentary creativity are usually tied to the affiliation of the creator with one of the fashion capitals. In this article, the main variables determining the specific features of how the profession is exercised in one city or another are illustrated. The case of Milan is then considered, in order to describe distinctive aspects of the profession of local fashion designers. The discussion is not based on information pertaining to the most successful designers, since it is not the most famous cases that furnish reliable information on the profession. Rather, it draws on twenty-one in-depth interviews with "ordinary" fashion designers conducted as part of an empirical research project carried out over recent years. It concludes that Milanese designers cultivate a "culture of wearability" based on an array of values including respect for the body, creative prudence, attention to the consumer's needs, conservatism, and business profit. In such a culture priority is given, not so much to radical innovation and visual aesthetic quality, as to incremental innovation and functionality with respect to the use made of garments in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the significance of Elizabethan dress and behaviour in conveying unspoken messages, in particular accusations and insults. It takes as a case study the appearance of Sir Robert Stapleton and his confederates at the York Assizes in 1583, where they had been ordered to make an apology to the Archbishop of York, Edwin Sandys. The case reveals how dress and conduct were significant in conveying non-verbal messages, but also that this form of communication was open to interpretation. It will be argued that, because the meaning of dress and symbols was culturally constructed, the message they communicated was as reliant on what was 'read' by an audience as it was on what the wearer intended to convey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1600 and 1850 Europe was reshaped economically, culturally, and materially-the secondhand clothing trade was a vital factor in these events. Cloth and clothing represented among the most important and costly purchases for generations, lying at the heart of household budgeting, intersecting routinely with markets. The secondhand trade was a unique micro-enterprise vehicle, as well as a growing commerce for entrepreneurs. It stimulated retailing and featured in international trade. Throughout these centuries, the scale of secondhand commerce, circulating in and beyond Europe, expanded enormously as economies were reshaped by industrial expansion and extra-European trade. During the past decades scholars have lifted the study of the secondhand trade from its previous obscurity, recognizing its organic connection to cultures and commerce. I now propose three stages in the evolution of the secondhand clothing trade, shaped by the underlying transformations of northwest Europe, suggesting the ways in which the patterns of economic and social change affected this sector over time. The three stages are: (1) transition from scarcity, (2) growing abundance, and (3) industrial plenty. By defining these tripartite divisions we can better understand the evolution of the secondhand clothing trade, its features, and relative significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers a surviving garment for what can and cannot be learned through an object analysis, and suggests that comparison with other sources can increase the value of the available evidence. The article argues that focusing on the technical decisions made during knitting provides insights into the understanding and assumptions of the knitter and allows for tentative conclusions to be reached about working practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of clothes in the survival strategies of the labouring poor in eighteenth-century Madrid, as well as the means of supply and distribution of these products, which included both mercantile (including buying and selling, pawning and payments in kind) and non-mercantile relations (including inheritance, charity and theft). This approach aims, firstly, at bringing to light the role of second-hand clothing trades and markets in the eighteenth-century European urban economy, together with the importance of non-mercantile methods of provision; secondly, at providing some clues to explain the increasing consumption of textiles in eighteenth-century towns whose populations were experiencing a loss of purchasing power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the clothing of the rural poor in seventeenth-century Sussex, considering what men and women wore, what their clothing was made of and where they got it from, drawing on a broad range of documentary sources including legal depositions, probate material and overseers' accounts. As would be expected, the clothing of this social group was primarily functional, reflecting limited budgets and arduous working lives. But we can see in the choice of fabric colour, trimmings and accessories that men and women were concerned about their appearance and could achieve a measure of social display, at least in their 'holiday' clothes. The ways in which the poor acquired their clothes were complex, involving them in overlapping spheres of production and distribution, which included home production and shop-bought ready-to-wear, all accommodated within a range of economic survival strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at advice on how to dress the body in order to achieve a slim figure from around 1960 and after 2000. How should clothes consumers materialize the ideals verbalized and visualized? How are big consumers portrayed, and what can contribute to making their bodies socially accepted, or preferably beautiful? The material shows how the communication of the ideal is maintained despite the change in communication form. Around 1960 the books were clear in their communication of the norms. In today's literature norms are no longer presented as norms, but are referred to as personal choices and a matter of well-being. In this way the strict ideal of similarity can be sustained under the guise of individuality. The article can therefore contribute to an understanding of why so much apparent freedom results in so little variation in the ways in which people actually dress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the exhibitions "Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915," held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art October 2, 2010 - March 27, 2011, "What Will She Wear?: The Enduring Romance of the Wedding Dress," held at the Fashion Museum in Bath, England February 14, 2011 - January 8, 2012, and "Saint Laurent Rive Gauche: La Révolution de la Mode," held at the Fondation Pierre Bergé Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, France, March 5 - July 17, 2011.

This article examines the historiography of children's dress, arguing that it has been limited by an unreflexive, uncritical conceptualisation of children and childhood. Drawing on insights afforded by the emergent field of childhood studies, by socially inflected perspectives on fashion and dress and by theories of consumption and consumer culture, the discussion turns toward ways of reconfiguring the historical study of children. It is suggested that future work may do well by embracing the ambiguities of children's identities, rather than trying to attenuate them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The profound link between consumption and status is well established, particularly in economic terms, yet the motivation of the consumer continues to cause much debate. Various recent studies, often using gender, class and/or geographical region as filters, have contributed to our understanding of the complexities of consumer motivation. Utilising the wealth of evidence left behind by one genteel family, the Gibbards of Sharnbrook in Bedfordshire, this study expands on their findings, providing an insight into the consumption habits of a rather neglected social group, the rural lesser gentry, at the end of the Georgian period. A focused analysis of their consumption of clothing reveals a close connection between consumption and identity and uncovers a complex and thoughtful purchasing process. The Gibbards displayed taste, thrift and good judgement in their interaction with the marketplace, applying various skills in the art of shopping. The nature of their relationship with each supplier links closely to their status and directly relates to location and the type of goods or services provided. The influence of fashion seems to have been tempered by prudence and propriety with the findings suggesting that their motivation to consume was more likely to have been founded out of a desire to maintain rather than to enhance their status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's Aesthetic dress, as depicted in satires, is often an external symptom of transgressive ideas or behavior: the independent young woman, the disobedient wife, or the inattentive mother becomes less threatening when safely contained on the stage or in the cartoon. While the distillation of Aesthetic trappings that occurs in satires may not accurately represent the subtle ideological and philosophical underpinnings of Aestheticism, it does make clear the fundamental shift in aesthetics that was representative of greater social shifts. The satires represent ruptures in the Victorian social order, signaling the nascent modern or proto-feminist sensibility truly at work in the female Aesthete. When women take up the mantle of Aesthetic dress, the ramifications extend beyond their own femininity or sexuality to their partners, their children, and society itself. The cartoons and plays discussed in this article pathologize the woman in Aesthetic dress, linking her clothing to physical or mental illness or deviance from her husband. But the satires also consistently offer hope for stasis: return the Victorian woman to Victorian dress, and the restoration of the home and marriage naturally follows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]