This study addressed practical problems with garment fit of non-stretch woven clothing for females of various body sizes and shapes. Literature highlights that this is still problematic for consumers ...and practitioners, especially with inconsistencies in the sizing of clothing. The research sought to develop a pattern-cutting framework of sizes within sizes for the mass production of women's non-stretch woven upper body clothing. The study systematically reviewed historical and commercial size charts, sizing approaches and theories to raise key questions and address gaps within theory and practice. The three main questions leading to the development of its contribution to knowledge were: (1) Does adding bust cup integration into non-stretch bodice blocks improve the fit of women's upper body clothing? (2) Would grading by percentage increments improve clothing fit, especially for larger sizes? (3) How can a pattern-cutting framework be efficiently developed and made commercially viable for mass production? It employed three phases of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods and analytical processes. These include a review of sizing systems and charts, application of body measurements data generated by a 3D body scanner, experimental pattern and garment development with fit trials, consumer assessments and statistical analysis of sizing data. The study utilised a triangulation approach to establish its final results. Focusing on anthropometric data and pattern construction theories, this study has applied an anthropometric bust cup percentage system to establish and practically test a pattern-cutting framework, which primarily underscores bust cup integration in the construction of clothing patterns to achieve optimal female garment fit. This system accommodates different bust cup sizes and figure shapes within a body size. It contributes to knowledge within this field of interest.
For women at the early modern courts, clothing and jewellery were essential elements in their political arsenal, enabling them to signal their dynastic value, to promote loyalty to their marital ...court and to advance political agendas. This is the first collection of essays to examine how elite women in early modern Europe marshalled clothing and jewellery for political ends. With essays encompassing women who traversed courts in Denmark, England, France, Germany, Habsburg Austria, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, the contributions cover a broad range of elite women from different courts and religious backgrounds as well as varying noble ranks.
In Buttoned Up, based on interviews with dozens of men in three U.S. cities with distinct local dress cultures--New York, San Francisco, and Cincinnati--Erynn Masi de Casanova asks what it means to ...wear the white collar now.
ZOOT SUIT (n.): the ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit. -Cab Calloway,The Hepster's Dictionary, 1944 Before the fashion statements of hippies, punks, or hip-hop, ...there was the zoot suit, a striking urban look of the World War II era that captivated the imagination. Created by poor African American men and obscure tailors, the "drape shape" was embraced by Mexican American pachucos, working-class youth, entertainers, and swing dancers, yet condemned by the U.S. government as wasteful and unpatriotic in a time of war. The fashion became notorious when it appeared to trigger violence and disorder in Los Angeles in 1943-events forever known as the "zoot suit riot." In its wake, social scientists, psychiatrists, journalists, and politicians all tried to explain the riddle of the zoot suit, transforming it into a multifaceted symbol: to some, a sign of social deviance and psychological disturbance, to others, a gesture of resistance against racial prejudice and discrimination. As controversy swirled at home, young men in other places-French zazous, South African tsotsi, Trinidadian saga boys, and Russian stiliagi-made the American zoot suit their own. InZoot Suit, historian Kathy Peiss explores this extreme fashion and its mysterious career during World War II and after, as it spread from Harlem across the United States and around the world. She traces the unfolding history of this style and its importance to the youth who adopted it as their uniform, and at the same time considers the way public figures, experts, political activists, and historians have interpreted it. This outré style was a turning point in the way we understand the meaning of clothing as an expression of social conditions and power relations. Zoot Suit offers a new perspective on youth culture and the politics of style, tracing the seam between fashion and social action.
Historical Styleconnects the birth of eighteenth-century British consumer society to the rise of historical self-consciousness. Prior to the eighteenth century, British style was slow to change and ...followed the cultural and economic imperatives of monarchical regimes. By the 1750s, however, a growing fashion press extolled, in writing and illustration, the new phenomenon of periodized fashion trends. As fashion fads came in and out of style, and as fashion texts circulated and obsolesced, Britons were forced to confront the material persistence of out-of-date fashions. Timothy Campbell argues that these fashion texts and objects shaped British perception of time and history by producing new curiosity about the very recent past, as well as a new self-consciousness about the means by which the past could be understood.
In a panoptic sweep,Historical Stylebrings together art history, philosophy, and literary history to portray an era increasingly aware of itself. Burgeoning consumer society, Campbell contends, highlighted the distinction between the past and the present, created an expectation of continual change, and forged a sense of history as something that could be tracked through material objects. Campbell assembles a wide range of writings, images, and objects to render this eighteenth-century landscape: commercial dress displays and David Hume's ideas of novelty as historical form; popular illustrations of recent fashion trends and Sir Joshua Reynolds's aesthetic precepts; fashion periodicals and Sir Walter Scott's costume-saturated historical fiction. In foregrounding fashion to trace eighteenth-century historicism,Historical Styledraws upon the interdisciplinary, multimedia archival impressions that fashionable dress has left behind, as well as the historical and conceptual resources within the field of fashion studies that literary and cultural historians of eighteenth-century and Romantic Britain have often neglected.
In this surprising new look at how clothing, style, and commerce came together to change American culture, Jennifer Le Zotte examines how secondhand goods sold at thrift stores, flea markets, and ...garage sales came to be both profitable and culturally influential. Initially, selling used goods in the United States was seen as a questionable enterprise focused largely on the poor. But as the twentieth century progressed, multimillion-dollar businesses like Goodwill Industries developed, catering not only to the needy but increasingly to well-off customers looking to make a statement. Le Zotte traces the origins and meanings of "secondhand style" and explores how buying pre-owned goods went from a signifier of poverty to a declaration of rebellion.Considering buyers and sellers from across the political and economic spectrum, Le Zotte shows how conservative and progressive social activists--from religious and business leaders to anti-Vietnam protesters and drag queens--shrewdly used the exchange of secondhand goods for economic and political ends. At the same time, artists and performers, from Marcel Duchamp and Fanny Brice to Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain, all helped make secondhand style a visual marker for youth in revolt.
