Through the wardrobe women's relationships with their clothes

Format:

Online Resource

Language:

English

Imprint:

Oxford : Berg, 2001

Subject:

Clothing and dress - Social aspects
Body image

Contributor:

Guy, Ali
Green, Eileen
Banim, Maura

ISBN:

9781847888921, 1847888925, and 9781847888921 (ebook)

Series:

Dress, body, culture

Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 286 p.) : ill

Notes:

Compliant with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Content is displayed as HTML full text which can easily be resized or read with assistive technology, with mark-up that allows screen readers and keyboard-only users to navigate easily

Bibliographic Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Contents:

1 Introduction (Maura Banim, Eileen Green and Ali Guy) Part 1: Consuming Images: Shopping Around for Identities 2 Young Women and Their Wardrobes (Pamela Abbott and Francesca Sapsford) 3 Big Girls' Blouses: Learning to Live with Polyester (Alison Adam) 4 The Wedding Dress: From Use Value to Sacred Object (Susanne Friese) 5 Choosing an Image: Exploring Women's Images through the Personal Shopper (Kate Gillen) Part 2: Constructing Images: Presenting Status and Identities in Public 6 Suiting Ourselves: Women Professors Using Clothes to Signal Authority, Belonging and Personal Style (Eileen Green) 7 Minding Appearances in Female Academic Culture (Susan Kaiser, Joan Chandler and Tania Hammidi) 8 Black Women and Self-Presentation: Appearing in (Dis)Guise (Anita Franklin) 9 Resistances and Reconciliations: Women and Body Art (Sharon Cahill and Sarah Riley) Part 3: Personal Images: Revealing and Concealing Private Selves 10 Flying on One Wing' (Jean Spence) 11 Cancer, Breast Reconstruction and Clothes (Anna van Wersch) 12 Dis/continued Selves: Why Do Women Keep Clothes They No Longer Wear? (Maura Banim and Ali Guy) 13 From Closet to Wardrobe? (Jan Winn and Diane Nutt) 14 Ontological, Epistemological and Methodological Clarifications in Fashion Research: From Critiqueto Empirical Suggestions (Efrat Tse lon) Part 4: Reflections upon Endnotes 15 Unpicking the Seams (Eileen Green, Maura Banim and Ali Guy)

Summary:

Relating to clothes is a fundamental experience in the lives of most Western women. Even when choice is fraught with ambivalence, clothing matters. From considerations about dressing for success, to worries about weight, through to investing particular articles of clothing with meaning bordering on the sacred, what we wear speaks volumes about personal identity - what is revealed, what is concealed, what is created. This book fills a gap in the existing literature on the ambivalence of fashion and dress by drawing on a wide range of women's experiences with their wardrobes and providing empirical data noticeably absent from other studies of women and dress. Navigating what is clearly a contested realm in feminist scholarship, contributors provide rich case studies of the reality of women's relationships with clothing. While on the surface concerns about fashion or dress may appear to reflect gendered patterns, in fact clothing may be used to challenge ascribed meanings about femininity

Call Number:

GT525