Bridging theory and practice, this accessible text considers fashion from both cultural studies and fashion studies perspectives, and addresses the growing interaction between the two fields.
Kaiser and Green use a wide range of cross-cultural case studies to explore how race, ethnicity, class, gender and other identities intersect and are produced through embodied fashion. Drawing on intersectionality in feminist theory and cultural studies, Fashion and Cultural Studies is essential reading for students and scholars.
This revised edition includes updated case studies and two new chapters. The first new chapter explores religion, spirituality, and faith in relation to style, fashion, and dress. The second offers a critique of "beauty" and considers dressed embodiment inclusive of diverse sizes, shapes and dis/abilities. Throughout the text, Kaiser and Green use a range of examples to interrogate the complex entanglements of production, regulation, distribution, consumption, and subject formation within and through fashion.
Fashion and Cultural Studies is an innovative, engaging, and refreshing text where Susan Kaiser and Denise Green examine the numerous entanglements of identity, fashion, style, dress, (to use their words) "both/and" the body. In the text and imagery, they center and prioritize examples from historically marginalized communities and they also engage in important critical self-reflection as white, middle-class US American women; other fashion studies scholars need to follow their example. This much-needed book is required reading for those interested in, and perhaps more importantly those not interested in, fashioning identities and justice.