Books like Glamour by Stephen Gundle

Three ex‑best friends—Sally, Jane, and Helen—facing heartbreak and poverty in L.A., unite to launch the department store Glamour, only to find that money, fame, and ambition threaten their newfound solidarity.

Explores how iconic fashion pieces and designers shaped cultural identities and social change across history.

In Venus Envy, Elizabeth Haiken traces the quest for physical perfection through surgery from the turn of the century to the present. Drawing on a wide array of sources - personal accounts, medical records, popular magazines, medical journals, and beauty guides - Haiken reveals how our culture came to see cosmetic surgery as a panacea for both individual and societal problems. As Americans and their surgeons linked the significance of "normal" standards of beauty to social adjustment and economic success, they also linked "undesirable" physical characteristics to psychological conditions such as the "inferiority complex," for which cosmetic surgery appeared to offer a sure cure. Many Americans now view cosmetic surgery as the most practical solution for an ever-increasing number of perceived problems - from low self-esteem to stalled careers - and plastic surgery has become one of the largest and fastest growing medical specialties in the world. But Haiken questions whether these "solutions" are not in some sense chimeras: by emphasizing the importance of appearance, cosmetic surgery raises serious concerns about how society views such intractable problems as aging, gender, and race - and about how Americans view themselves.

Roland Barthes, widely regarded as one of the most subtle and perceptive critics of the 20th century, was particularly fascinated by fashion and clothing. This work presents a set of essays, revealing the breadth and insight of Barthes' long engagement with the history of clothes.

A historical exploration of fashion photography, design, and installations by experimental artists of the 1990s, through the lens of interviews and Marxist analysis.

An engaging guide to the enduring fashion staples of women's clothing history, featuring ten iconic pieces and their significance.