Books like Fifty years of fashion by Valerie Steele

290 p. : 25 cm

Explore eight centuries of western costume with Joan Nunn’s illustrated survey, detailing garments, styles, fabrics, and social context from 1200 to 2000.

A pictorial and textual chronology of the evolution of fashion from ancient Egypt to the present day.

An authoritative study of Vogue magazine’s 75-year journey, examining couture, designers, and clothing within the broader social and cultural shifts of the twentieth century.

An in‑depth exploration of the history of clothing and dress, tracing the evolution of costume and fashion through different eras and cultures.

A comprehensive survey of twentieth‑century fashion, charting its stylistic phases, key designers, and influential personalities.

What Herbert Blau suggests, in Nothing in Itself, is that fashion itself, today, has been anticipating and redefining, in the dazzle on the runway, or even in ready-to-wear, the terms in which it is critiqued, while sometimes giving the impression that it is inseparable from critique; in short, there is little to be said of fashion that is not somehow visible in fashion, though even in the mainstream we may call it antifashion. Which is all the more reason to look at the clothes. The book does so copiously, with a fastidious eye to style, as if nothing could be said of a garment, no appropriate fabric of thought, without the felt sensation. Meanwhile, if the theatricality of fashion, or the "fashion system," is now belabored in cultural studies, there are other seductive issues--recurring in history and, like the rise and fall of the hemline, approaching the metaphysical--that come with dress in its fascination-effect. As Blau sees it, this will inevitably return us to the validities, artful vanities, and deceits of appearance. No more than appearance, "nothing in itself," that fashion has substance, complex and elusive substance, is the thematic of this book, which puts another complexion on the subject, the look, and the look that incites the look, in high style, street style, classical elegance or fetishistic chic, from farthingale and corset to drop-dead glamour, power suits, waifishness, and grunge.

Fetish explores how changing attitudes toward sex and gender have shaped fashion, drawing on history, psychology, and interviews to examine the rise of fetish garments and their role in identity and power.

An updated reference guide detailing the history of fashion, featuring new entries, images, and concise explanations of key garments and styles.