Fashion and Materiality - by Heike Jenss & Viola Hofmann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Fashion is intimately tied to the material world. With a focus on diverse cultural practices, this book offers new insights into the dynamic relationships between fashion, bodies, and material culture. In a series of original case studies, both historical and contemporary, the collection explores how fashion and clothing affect articulations of body and self, experiences of time and place, and the shaping of social and local/global relationships.

With chapters from leading international scholars, Fashion and Materiality takes the reader from the study of clothing and biography, and an early modern "foreign dress" collection, to Chinoiserie clothing in 18th-century Europe and fast fashion production in today's China. The book also examines fashion's role in nation building, and entanglements between fashion and migration across clothing donations for Syrian refugees in Germany and the circulation of "refugee chic" on international fashion runways. Scrutinizing the dense connections between fashion, clothing, materiality, and humanity, the book shows how the material interacts forcefully with the personal and political.

Review Quotes

"Fascinating and a joy to read ... It offers thought-provoking discussion opportunities for critical studies, and is recommended for inclusion in all dress history libraries." --The Journal of Dress History

"Far from being "mere clothing," fashion here is shown to reflect the personal, the social, the economic, and the political. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." --CHOICE

"[A] welcome and important addition to the literature that furthers current debates in fashion studies and other disciplines." --Eugenia Paulicelli, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA

"With a rich historical and geographical span, and through highly engaging case studies, this wonderful collection brings materiality into focus in the field of fashion studies." --Agnès Rocamora, London College of Fashion, UK

About the Author

Heike Jenss is Associate Professor of Fashion Studies at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York, USA.

Viola Hofmann is a full-time faculty member at the Institute of Arts and Material Culture at TU Dortmund University, Germany.