Clothing is the most personal expression of a culture. Objects of dress and adornment reveal so much about the individuals who wore them and the cultures and times in which they lived. History, art, technology, psychology, culture, social systems, customs--all are reflected in people's clothing. Countless treasures exist in clothing and textile collections across the U.S., but until now no comprehensive directory to the collections was available. Clothing and Textile Collections in the United States is the first guide to list information on more than 2,600 American collections. Included in...

Flip on the entertainment news, open an issue of a popular magazine, or step into any department store and you ll appreciate the impact of the multibillion-dollar fashion industry on American culture. Yet its origins in the nineteenth-century rag trade of Jewish tailors, cutters, pressers, peddlers, and shopkeepers have yet to be fully explored. In this copiously illustrated volume, scholars from varied backgrounds consider the role of American Jews in creating, developing, and furthering the national garment industry from the Civil War forward. Drawn from an award-winning exhibition of the...

Form-fitting dresses, silk veils, earrings, furs, high-heeled shoes, make up, and dyed, flowing hair. It is difficult for a contemporary person to reconcile these elegant clothes and accessories with the image of cloistered nuns. For many of the some thousand nuns in early modern Venice, however, these fashions were the norm.
Often locked in convents without any religious calling simply to save their parents the expense of their dowry these involuntary nuns relied on the symbolic meaning of secular clothes, fabrics, and colors to rebel against the rules and prescriptions of conventual...

"Re-examining seventeenth-century French style"
Between 1678 and 1710, Parisian presses printed hundreds of images of elegantly attired men and women dressed in the latest "mode, "and posed to display every detail of their clothing and accessories. Long used to illustrate dress of the period, these fashion prints have been taken at face value and used uncritically. Drawing on perspectives from art history, costume history, French literature, museum conservation and theatrical costuming, the essays in this volume explore what the prints represent and what they reveal about fashion and...

In the early 1940s, American designer Emily Wilkens went beyond her previous experience in children's wear to create costumes for two teenage characters in a Broadway play. Recognizing the growing importance of the teenager in American culture, she soon launched Emily Wilkens Young Originals, the first designer label specializing in upscale, fashionable clothing for teenage girls. Within the space of a few years, Wilkens skyrocketed from obscurity to national recognition, yet even today many fashion insiders would not recognize her name.
Fashion historian Rebecca Jumper Matheson explores...

"Managing Costume Collections "offers systematic approaches to organization, accessibility, record keeping, safety, and a host of other stewardship concerns related to managing costume collections of every type. Conceived to address needs long identified by the Costume Society of America, this guide is written for a broad spectrum of collection managers at museums, historical societies and houses, university theaters and study collections, and company archives, as well as for vintage dealers, private collectors, and living history performers.
Drawing on the wisdom of many disciplines,...

"Managing Costume Collections "offers systematic approaches to organization, accessibility, record keeping, safety, and a host of other stewardship concerns related to managing costume collections of every type. Conceived to address needs long identified by the Costume Society of America, this guide is written for a broad spectrum of collection managers at museums, historical societies and houses, university theaters and study collections, and company archives, as well as for vintage dealers, private collectors, and living history performers.
Drawing on the wisdom of many disciplines,...

A critical and nuanced look at societal perceptions of Black hair, past and present Black Hair in a White World is an in-depth study of the cultural history, perceptions, and increasing acceptance of Black hair in the broader American society. The essays in this anthology discuss representations and responses to Black hair, including analysis of research findings about marketing messages and depictions of Black hair in popular culture, discussions of workplace discrimination, and stories about the origins of the natural hair movement and how many Black people have learned to embrace and...