Throughout history certain forms and styles of dress have been deemed appropriate - or more significantly, inappropriate - for people as they age. Older women in particular have long been subject to social pressure to tone down, to adopt self-effacing, covered-up styles. But increasingly there are signs of change, as older women aspire to younger, more mainstream, styles, and retailers realize the potential of the 'grey market'. Fashion and Age is the first study to systematically explore the links between clothing and age, drawing on fashion theory and cultural gerontology to examine the changing ways in which age is imagined, experienced and understood in modern culture through the medium of dress. Clothes lie between the body and its social expression, and the book explores the significance of embodiment in dress and in the cultural constitution of age. Drawing on the views of older women, journalists and fashion editors, and clothing designers and retailers, it aims to widen the agenda of fashion studies to encompass the everyday dress of the majority, shifting the debate about age away from its current preoccupation with dependency, towards a fuller account of the lived experience of age. Fashion and Age will be of great interest to students of fashion, material culture, sociology, sociology of age, history of dress and to clothing designers.

A close study of clothes worn by aristocratic families and their households at the time of the Black Prince - and of Chaucer - showing Europe-wide influences. 1340 to 1363 were years remarkable for dramatic developments in fashion and for extravagant spending on costume, foreshadowing the later luxury of Richard II's court. Stella Mary Newton broke new ground with this detailed study, which discusses fourteenth-century costume in detail. She draws on surviving accounts from the Royal courts, the evidence of chronicles and poetry (often from unpublished manuscripts), and representations in painting, sculpture andmanuscript illumination. Her exploration of aspects of chivalry, particularly the choice of mottoes and devices worn at tournaments, and of the exchange of gifts of clothing between reigning monarchs, offers new insights into thesocial history of the times, and she has much to say that is relevant to the study of illuminated manuscripts of the fourteenth century. STELLA MARY NEWTON's lifelong interest in costume has been the mainspring of her work, from early days as a stage and costume designer (including designing the costumes for the first production of T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral) to her later work at the National Gallery advising on the implications ofcostume for the purpose of dating, and at the Courtauld Institute where she set up the department for the study of the history of dress.

This book represents a major milestone in the endeavour to understand how communication is impacting on the fashion industry and on societal fashion-related practices and values in the digital age. It presents the proceedings of FACTUM 19, the first in a series of fashion communication conferences that highlights important theoretical and empirical work in the field. Beyond documenting the latest scientific insights, the book is intended to foster the sharing of methodological approaches, expand the dialogue between communications’ studies and fashion-related disciplines, help establish an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars, and offer encouragement and fresh ideas to junior researchers. It is of high value to academics and students in the fields of fashion communication, fashion marketing, visual studies in fashion, digital transformation of the fashion industry, and the cultural heritage dimension of fashion. In addition, it is a key resource for professionals seeking sound research on fashion communication and marketing.

During the medieval period, people invested heavily in looking good. The finest fashions demanded careful chemistry and compounds imported from great distances and at considerable risk to merchants; the Church became a major consumer of both the richest and humblest varieties of cloth, shoes, and adornment; and vernacular poets began to embroider their stories with hundreds of verses describing a plethora of dress styles, fabrics, and shopping experiences. Drawing on a wealth of pictorial, textual and object sources, the volume examines how dress cultures developed – often to a degree of dazzling sophistication – between the years 800 to 1450. Beautifully illustrated with 100 images, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, visual representations, and literary representations.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the production of dress shifted dramatically from being predominantly hand-crafted in small quantities to machine-manufactured in bulk. The increasing democratization of appearances made new fashions more widely available, but at the same time made the need to differentiate social rank seem more pressing. In this age of empire, the coding of class, gender and race was frequently negotiated through dress in complex ways, from fashionable dress which restricted or exaggerated the female body to liberating reform dress, from self-defining black dandies to the oppressions and resistances of slave dress. Richly illustrated with over 100 images and drawing on a plethora of visual, textual and object sources, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Empire presents essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations to illustrate the diversity and cultural significance of dress and fashion in the period.

Over the last century there has been a complete transformation of the fashion system. The unitary top-down fashion cycle has been replaced by the pulsations of multiple and simultaneous styles, while the speed of global production and circulation has become ever faster and more complex. Running in tandem, the development of artificial fibres has revolutionized the composition of clothing, and the increased focus on youth, sexuality, and the body has radically changed its design. From the 1920s flapper dress to debates over the burkini, fashion has continued to be deeply involved in society's larger issues. Drawing on a wealth of visual, textual and object sources and illustrated with 100 images, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Modern Age presents essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations to illustrate the diversity and cultural significance of dress and fashion in the period.

Eighteenth-century fashion was cosmopolitan and varied. Whilst the wildly extravagant and colorful elite fashions parodied in contemporary satire had significant influence on wider dress habits, more austere garments produced in darker fabrics also reflected the ascendancy of a puritan middle class as well as a more practical approach to dress. With the rise of print culture and reading publics, fashions were more quickly disseminated and debated than ever, and the appetite for fashion periodicals went hand in hand with a preoccupation with the emerging concept of taste. Richly illustrated with 100 images and drawing on pictorial, textual and object sources, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations to illustrate the diversity and cultural significance of dress and fashion in the period.