From religious orders to the military, schools to fetish clubs, uniforms shape identities. What does it mean to wear one? Why do certain professions require them? Why are uniforms so alluring when they inspire so many ambivalent feelings? Craik debunks the myth that the meaning of uniforms is transparent. From nurses to brides, from athletes to police officers, uniforms express certain implicit (and sometimes explicit) codes about power, transgression, eroticism and masquerade. Uniforms Exposed investigates the social and cultural significance of these ordinary yet extraordinary...

Fashion is everywhere. It is now one of the main ways in which we present ourselves to others, signaling what we want to communicate about our sexuality, wealth, professionalism, subcultural and political allegiances, social status, even our mood. It is also a global industry with huge economic, political and cultural impact, from the impact of the catwalk on mainstream retail to sweatshop production to celebrity branding.

Fashion: The Key Concepts presents a concise overview of this complex phenomenon--the meanings of clothes, the different cultural and fashion systems around...

Modern Fashion Traditions questions the dynamics of fashion systems and spaces of consumption outside the West. Too often, these fashion systems are studied as a mere and recent result of globalization and Western fashion influences, but this book draws on a wide range of non-Western case studies and analyses their similarities and differences as legitimate fashion systems, contesting Eurocentric notions of tradition and modernity, continuity versus change, and 'the West versus the Rest'.

Preconceptions about non-Western fashion are challenged through diverse case studies...