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£31.99
This book puts the material back into clothing. In recent years social scientists have become increasingly interested in theories of fashion, but have rarely directly addressed the material qualities of clothing. By contrast, traditional studies of dress have focused on textiles but often neglect the larger cultural context within which dress becomes consumed as clothing. This book fills a major gap by combining these two 'camps' through an expressly material culture approach to clothing. In sustained case studies, Kchler and Miller argue that cloth and clothing are living, vibrant parts of culture and the body. From the recycling of cloth in Africa and India and the use of pattern in the Pacific, to the history of 'wash and wear' and why women wear the wrong clothes to restaurants in London, this book shows the considerable advantage gained by seamlessly combining material and social aspects of dress and textiles.
Introduction--Daniel Miller, University College London * Looking good: feeling right-aesthetics of the self--Sophie Woodward, University College London * The other half: the material culture of new fibres--Kaori O'Connor, University College London * Aesthetics, Ethics and the Politics of the Turkish Headscarf--zlem Sandikci, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey and Gliz Ger, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey * Cloth that lies: the secrets of recycling in India--Lucy Norris, University College London * From Thrift to Fashion: Materiality and Aesthetics in Dress Practices in Zambia--Karen Tranberg Hansen, Northwestern University * Nga Aho Tipuna (ancestral threads): Maori cloaks from New Zealand--Amiria Henare, University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology * Relative Imagery: Patterns of Response to the Revival of Archaic Chiefly Dress in Fiji--Chlo Colchester, University College London * Pattern, Efficacy And Enterprise: On the Fabrication of Connections In Melanesia-- Graeme Were, Goldsmiths College, London * Why are there quilts in Polynesia?--Susanne Kchler, University College London
