History Of Dress Research Articles

Class, clothes, and co-creativity

Abstract This article discusses the proliferation of class distinctions through the consumption of fashion, using the concept of co-creativity to further our understanding of the role of consumers in the production of newness and difference. Drawing on recent theories of identity and creativity, it is a contribution to the development of research methodologies adequate to the task of understanding fashion, by focusing on cross-media practices through which clothes/objects become meaningful, rather studying clothes within the confines of an object-based discipline (such as Dress History). It emphasizes creative production as the outcome of historically specific relationships between practitioners, objects/images, and consumers. The broader context for this discussion relates to current issues and debates around the creative economy’s need for a fusion of knowledge and skills from graduates who are comfortable working across the boundaries of established disciplines such as design and marketing.

A cultural history of Jewish dress

A cultural history of Jewish dress

Fashion and Cultural Heritage in Perspective: Ist Seminar on History and Historiography of Fashion and Dress. University of São Paulo (USP)/Federal University of Goiás (UFG) (June 2013)

Fashion and Cultural Heritage in Perspective: Ist Seminar on History and Historiography of Fashion and Dress. University of São Paulo (USP)/Federal University of Goiás (UFG) (June 2013)

The national anthem: A mirror image of the Zimbabwean identity?

The article parades those attributes in the Zimbabwean National Anthem that make it Zimbabwean. Having shifted from an anthem for Africa as a continent, ‘Ishe Komborera Africa’, the current Zimbabwe national anthem, eulogizes some sense of patriotism, Zimbabwean hegemony and pride among the Zimbabwean populace. Every nation has its own identity that is mirrored through symbolic historical monuments, artifacts, dress codes and music including the national anthem. Zimbabweans, being the custodians of their identity, have risen up to the challenge of composing their own anthem through the late Solomon Mutswairo and Fred Changundega, who provided the text and score, respectively. Through a content analysis research method the article explains the musical elements that make up the Zimbabwean national anthem. From the research done a conclusion has been drawn that themes and ideologies associated with the Zimbabwean national anthem reflect aspects of nationalism, but in terms of musical compositional techniques some concepts such as rhythm, dynamics, and performance directions are inherited from foreign cultures.

From the ‘union parfaite’ to the ‘union brisée’: The French Couture Industry and themidinettesduring the Great War

This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the ‘Developments in Dress History’ conference at the University of Brighton in December 2011. Based on research from the author's master's thesis, ‘La mode en France durant la Première Guerre mondiale’, written at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, this article examines the declining relationship between the Chambre syndicale de la couture parisienne, the couturiers and the seamstresses, which ignited an industry-wide labour strike in May 1917.

Authors; Burgon Society Shop; Burgon Society On-line Bibliography

This content lists the authors' biographies and provides a list of items to purchase from The Burgon Society, which includes books and individual print journal volumes; and a link to the Burgon Society On-line Bibliography for those researching the design, history and practice of academical dress.

Fish Scales and Faux Pearls: A Brief Exploration into the History of Manufacturing Faux Pearls

An early nineteenth-century pink silk crepe gown adorned with thousands of faux pearls was one of the highlights of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Autumn 2010 exhibit Fashioning Fashion. During conservation treatment, the faux pearls were examined in detail in order to inform conservation decision-making and a curious manufacturing method was found, namely a practice developed in the seventeenth century by a French rosary maker: delicate and hollow glass beads were filled with a slurry of material derived from fish scales and gelatin or sturgeon glue. This information supported treatment decisions for the piece and is shared here to disseminate information on the history and manufacture of faux pearls and to inform collections care approaches for costume decorated with these extraordinary and fragile beads. This approach demonstrates how detailed examination of an object can act as the catalyst for exploring the history of manufacturing technology as well as deepening understanding of dress history.

CSA Forum

Originally presented as a panel at the Costume Society of America 2011 Symposium, this essay advocates incorporation of a new paradigm in fashion scholarship, teaching, and learning that acknowledges fashion’s global and diverse dimensions and occurrences. A brief historiography describes the underpinnings of the dominant perspective used in theorizing fashion. The rationale for the new perspective includes examination of the previous view’s inherent limitations — that fashion originated in fourteenth-century Europe and that fashion is Western — which have affected the entire conceptualization of dress history. Examples of continually changing styles for women’s hair in Imperial Rome and in Chinese lip coloring demonstrate temporal and spatial contexts of fashion outside of the Western capitalist arena. A general definition of fashion is presented. The essay concludes with discussion of contemporary world dress and world fashion, review of recent research, and strategies for the academy in scholarship and teaching of fashion and dress history.

A Collaboration to Teach Students to Utilize Historic Dress as Inspiration for Apparel Design

Historic dress is often used by apparel designers as a source of inspiration for new designs. However, using historic information as a source of inspiration in designing has been taught separately in apparel design (AD) and fashion history (FH) courses. To help students expand their creativity in AD, two university instructors decided to collaborate on a project linking historic dress and AD. The instructors prepared and presented teaching materials and assessed related projects for the required courses in Apparel Design and Fashion History. To assess students’ learning and satisfaction, the instructors developed prequestionnaires and postquestionnaires based on Lamb and Kallal () Functional, Expressive and Aesthetic (FEA) Apparel Design Framework. Responses to the prequestionnaire showed that students lacked awareness and information about using historic dress as inspiration. Responses from the postquestionnaires revealed that students looked at historic garment details, colors, and silhouettes and interpreted them in a modern way. Students said that additional benefits were that the exposure to historic dress increased their creativity, helped them understand FH, and helped them connect their course work in Fashion History and Apparel Design.

New and Recent Books

preface I am finding it increasingly difficult to find a satisfactory annual list of books for the Costume Society. The library on this subject has changed significantly in the last fifteen years or so. Publishers such as Berg (now part of Bloomsbury) are still publishing serious books on the subject, but the majority on offer now are large glossy coffee-table books promoting the work of fashion designers. When I first started to be interested in this subject as a theatre design student, it was called costume history. There were countless complete histories of Western costume available; Millia Davenport’s The Book of Costume and Francois Boucher’s A History of Costume in the West were favourites of mine. I slowly acquired all the Cunnington books on English costume, as well as others such as the ones on occupational dress, birth, marriage and death, and so on. As students we needed the classics on costume construction, Max Tilke, Norah Waugh and Janet Arnold. Once I had turned professional as a costume designer, my book buying became more focused on particular subjects I needed help with: Lou Taylor’s Mourning Dress, for example, or books on working dress, ecclesiastical dress, men’s dress; also Margaret Scott’s Late Gothic Europe and Stella Mary Newton’s The Dress of the Venetians 1495–1525. I do not think I noticed at the time that the word costume had been replaced by dress. I was certainly made aware of this when I studied History of Dress at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where I read more theoretical works, such as Flugel’s Psychology of Dress, Konig’s A Restless Image, Aileen Ribeiro’s Dress and Morality, Valerie Steele’s Fashion & Eroticism, Elizabeth Wilson’s Adorned in Dreams, and Roland Barthes’ The Fashion System. Today, as you can see below, serious work is still being done on the subject, but sadly many bookshop shelves do not always reflect this range.

현대 패션에 표현된 저고리 스타일 연구

This study researches the form of the Korean jacket point through relics from the Three Kingdoms period that have the traditional Korean style and grace of the Goryeo period as well as the form of the modern Korean jacket starting point. Several conclusions can be drawn from the Korean Image of the Korean jacket that can be classified into types expressed in the jacket style of modern fashion. Therefore, we will analyze traditional elements of Korean beauty through the "Korean image" on how to express it in modern fashion. The purpose of this study is to understand modern design creation and Korean culture. It is important to begin the world through the application of traditional elements to recognize Korean beauty as well as to utilize historical dress based on function and popularity to continue the effort.

런던 호니만 박물관 소장 한복 유물에 관한 연구

This paper investigates the formative features and the historical meaning of the Korean dress collection held in the Horniman Museum in London. The Museum holds eighteen items of Korean dresses donated by Mrs. C. de J. Luxmore in 1948 and by Mrs. Bowra in 1953. Male dresses consist of white silk outer robe (durumagi), a pale violet silk waistcoat (jokki), a jade green silk jacket (jeogori), pale yellow silk trousers (baji), a pair of ankle bands (daenim), a cotton waistband (dae), a silk purse (jumeoni), a rattan under-vest (deungbaeja), a pair of rattan wristlets (deungtosi), a top hat (gat) and a skullcap (tanggeon). Female dresses comprise a jade green silk jacket (jeogori), an ivory silk skirt (chima), a light blue silk petticoat (sokchima), two kinds of white cotton trousers (sokbaji and soksokgot), a pair of silk wristlets (tosi) and a pair of padded socks (beoseon). A Korean dress collection of the Horniman Museum shows a set of ordinary dress items worn by a married couple in the 1930s and the 1940s. Of these items, a silk petticoat (sokchima) and a rattan under-vest (deungbaeja) can be highly evaluated as object resources in the history of Korean dress. The petticoat is a rare and valuable example that represents an early type of modern petticoat that has replaced a traditional petticoat (dansokgot). The rattan under-vest has square neckline and two tiny sleeves similar to a Western cap sleeve. This kind of under-vest is a transitional form shown between under-vest similar to the Korean waistcoat (baeja) and one similar to the Western waistcoat (jokki).

Gender, the Hat, and Quaker Universalism in the Wake of the English Revolution

In 1661, the Quaker John Boyer was beaten, blinded and left to die after refusing to doff his cap to a nobleman.1 Other Quaker men in revolutionary and Restoration England suffered similar reprisals for their insulting denial of 'hat honour' to their supposed superiors. Others yet found themselves gaoled, fined, or whipped for refusing to remove their caps in court.2 In 1652, James Nayler explained to one judge the early rationale for this practice. Charged with blasphemy for claiming that Christ resided within him, and then accused of failing to pay due reverence to the court, Nayler said that he kept his hat upon his head not in contempt but in obedience to authority. He obeyed the authority of God rather than that of man, however, and divine authority recognized no earthly degrees of difference: 'I honour the Power as it is of God, without respect of persons, it being forbidden by Scripture. He that respects men's persons commits sin, and is convinced of the law as a transgressor.'3 The Quaker missionary Edward Burrough echoed these sentiments, asking 'Hath not God made of one mould and one blood all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth? And doth not he that respects persons commit sin?' He challenged his readers: 'Must it now be an offence not to put off the hat or give respect to the person of him that hath a gold ring and fine apparel? Hath not all the earthly lordship, tyranny, and oppression sprung from this ground, by which creatures have been exalted and set up one above another, trampling underfoot and despising the poor?'4John Perrot tried pressing this notion that God was no respecter of persons to its furthest point, one that denied distinctions based on sex as well as social status. A Quaker missionary imprisoned in Rome from 1658 to 1661, Perrot urged in one missive home that 'if any Friend be moved of the Lord God to pray in the congregation of God ... without taking off the hat, or the shoes, let him do so in the fear and name of the Lord'.5 Although Quaker men assiduously retained their hats before all people, they kept the common practice of uncovering during prayer, while women prayed with heads covered. Perrot wrote that this was yet another needless, carnal custom of the sort that Quakers had otherwise repudiated. More to the point, it implied an unwarranted distinction between men and women where none existed. God was no respecter of persons, in this sense or any other. George Fox, then coming to be recognized as the leader of the Quakers, reacted to Perrot's intervention angrily and with alarm. He hounded out Perrot and those who agreed with him, and refined a centralized system of discipline over members of the sect that emerged from the fray.The Quakers' refusal of 'hat honour' to their superiors is well known; once meant to deny distinctions, it became a distinctive badge of the movement and its members. The 'hat controversy' that splintered the early movement and helped solidify a Quaker sect over the 1660s is rather less familiar, however, as are the gender dimensions of both hat testimonies. Generally overlooked or quickly dismissed, this hat controversy has received better, if still brief, mention in a few Quaker studies. Richard Bauman, for example, treats it as a manifestation of the struggle between spontaneity and formalism, between the inner light and outward forms; Larry Ingle depicts it as a contest between individual conscience and group discipline.6 The hat controversy did manifest these tensions; but highlighting its gender dimension suggests that a conflict over the social significance of spiritual equality lay behind it as well. Accordingly, this essay first introduces the broader history and historiography of dress and gesture before turning to the Quakers' use of the hat to repudiate earthly hierarchies of social rank. After a brief excursion to outline the history of headwear in marking sexual subordination, it examines the conflict over Perrot's plea that his fellows fully reject all carnal distinctions. …

Research and Theory Trends in Historic Dress and Textiles Research

Historic dress and textiles (HDT) has been a prominent research subject during the 20th century but has not been examined via a focused journal analysis. Thus, HDT research and theory trends were explored by analyzing 306 articles published in Clothing and Textiles Research Journal ( CTRJ) from 1982-2006 and Dress from 1975-2006. A content analysis approach was adopted to examine the following: quantity of HDT articles, single-multiple authorship, author affiliation, funding sources, research topic (including geography and time period), research method, and use of theory. The topics studied most often in CTRJ were apparel construction/production and research issues (19.5% each), and in Dress, social/psychological aspects of dress (18.3%). Most research articles (87.0%) used qualitative data to address research questions. The most frequently used research method in both journals was the social/cultural history-based approach. The majority of research articles (86%) did not articulate a specific or “named” theory. The findings yield valuable insights into the body of HDT research published within two key journals of the clothing and textiles field, including areas of strength related to topics of study and the suggestion that an open dialogue regarding theory development be continued.

University Historic Clothing Museums and Collections

University historic dress collections and museums provide unique opportunities to actively fulfill critical mission statements of the university, including possibilities for research projects, providing firsthand opportunities for students to view real-life objects, and outreach/service opportunities to the public. Despite the importance of collections in fulfilling university missions, research about current practices and best practices is scarce. The purpose of this study was to document practices, challenges, and opportunities for excellence experienced by university collections within the United States. To explore the topic, a qualitative methodology in which 14 curators and collection managers were interviewed was utilized. The results of this study suggest that many curators and collection managers endure many similar struggles within their departments, such as lack of financial resources, time, and support from upper administration. Yet, all of the participants stated the significant contributions and impact material culture can have on the mission of their institutions.

The dictionary of fashion history

- What is an earthquake gown? - Who wore eelskin masher trousers? - What did the word dudes mean in the 16th century? A Dictionary of English Costume by C. Willett Cunnington, Phillis Cunnington and Charles Beard was originally published in 1960. A monumental achievement and encyclopaedic in scope, it was a comprehensive catalogue of fashion terms from the mid-medieval period up to 1900. It was reissued and updated several times, for the last time in 1976. For decades it has served as a bible for costume historians. The Dictionary of Fashion History completely updates and supplements the Cunningtons' landmark work to bring it up to the present day. Featuring additional terms and revised definitions, this new edition represents an essential reference for costume historians, students of fashion history, or anyone involved in creating period costume for the theatre, film or television. It also is fascinating reading for those simply interested in the subject. Clear, concise, and meticulous in detail, this essential reference answers countless questions relating to the history of dress and adornment and promises to be a definitive guide for generations to come.

The object of fashion: methodological approaches to the history of fashion

This essay considers the role of artefacts in the historical study of dress and fashion and suggests the existence of three different approaches. The field of history of dress and costume has a long tradition going back to the nineteenth century. It adopts the methodologies of art history and considers artefacts as central to the analysis of different periods and themes. In the last few decades the emergence of fashion studies has been interpreted as a distancing from artefacts. It is here claimed that fashion studies brought theoretical rigour and embraced a deductive methodology of analysis in which artefacts still played an important function. The final part of this essay introduces the reader to what I call the material culture of fashion, a hybrid methodology borrowed from anthropology and archeology in which the object is central in the study of social, cultural and economic practices that are time specific. It shows in particular the challenges and paybacks of such an approach.

Dress behind bars: prison clothing as criminality

Research for this sole-authored book was undertaken during AHRC-funded Research Leave (2007). It represents Ash’s expertise as a dress historian and interest in the history and current organisation of prisons, which evolved from her teaching experience in Holloway women’s prison and Wakefield top security men’s prison in the 1970s. Crossing the disciplines of dress history, social history and film studies, this is the first book to examine the history of prisoners' clothing. Focusing on UK, American and European prison clothing, this history analyses waves of reform, sandwiched between regimes of punishing clothing restraints. Prison clothing, as Ash demonstrates, raises issues of regional, colonial, post-colonial, gender, fashion and class variations, contested by collective, political and individual tactics devised by inmates to survive and subvert cultures of punishment. This book is based on research into penal history, dress history in relation to uniforms and corporeal identity, criminological debates, oral histories, and 19th- and 20th-century prison art and literature. Material from correspondence and interviews with prisoners, prison reform groups, those who work as designers in prisons, and curators of prison photography and dress informed the study. To demonstrate the value of the clothes themselves to researchers, Ash also wrote an article for the Journal of Design History on ‘The prison uniforms collection at the galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham, UK’ (2011). The book was reviewed by journals including Journal of Design History (2011), British Journal of Criminology (2011), Textile History (2011), Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology (2010) and Crime Media Culture (2010). Related talks included ‘Prison clothing as political resistance’ at NCAD Dublin (2010). BBC Radio 4 made the book the focus of an episode of Thinking Allowed (2009), and Ash was interviewed about women prisoners' attitudes to uniforms and prison clothing for ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2013).

A Revolution in Roman History?

Whether or not Syme made a convincing case for revolution at Rome, his Roman Revolution did not effect a revolution in Roman history. To be sure, his choice of where to start and where to end his discussion was unorthodox (if orthodoxy was the old edition of the Cambridge Ancient History or Rice Holmes or the periodization of Oxford Greats), but his relentless focus on individual political actors and their relations with one another differs from the emphasis of earlier scholars only in its priorities and intensity. Whether or not Wallace-Hadrill makes a convincing case for revolution at Rome, Rome's Cultural Revolution is revolutionary. To be sure, the individual parts of the book have been variously anticipated in particular studies, but the insistence that what happens in the history of buildings, instrumentum domesticum, dress, and monuments constitutes not simply the background to a political story, but is itself the story of Late Republican Rome — in W.-H.'s own words ‘that the political transformation of the Roman world is integrally connected to its cultural transformation’ (xix) — challenges the assumptions on which Roman historians have built the history of the Republic ever since Asinius Pollio.

The Origins of Dress History and Cesare Vecellio's 'pourtraits of attire'

This article discusses possible reasons for the creation of Degli Habiti Antichi, et Moderni. It is suggested that Vecellio's achievement in describing dress with a combination of illustrative woodcuts and descriptive prose may be celebrated as the first modern history of dress.