Fashion, Culture, and Identity

By Fred Davis

Book Overview

What do our clothes say about who we are or who we think we are? How does the way we dress communicate messages about our identity? Is the desire to be "in fashion" universal, or is it unique to Western culture? How do fashions change? These are just a few of the intriguing questions Fred Davis sets out to answer in this provocative look at what we do with our clothes--and what they can do to us.

Much of what we assume to be individual preference, Davis shows, really reflects deeper social and cultural forces. Ours is an ambivalent social world, characterized by tensions over gender roles, social status, and the expression of sexuality. Predicting what people will wear becomes a risky gamble when the link between private self and public persona can be so unstable.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226138089
• ISBN13: 9780226138084
• Release Date: October 1992
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 233 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

For academics not the layperson

I just wanted to offer an alternative viewpoint to P.Campbell's review. What they say is correct, in that there is a lot of academic language in this book, but I think only to a degree that is appropriate to the level the book is aimed at. The book refers to the 'dialectic' of fashion, there's a lot of 'mediating the body' etc, and true, Mr Davis does use the word 'apercu', which I will admit is nearly unforgiveable, when 'perception' would have done just as well. However overall this book reads in tone pretty similar to an issue of 'Dress, Body, Culture'. It's a standard text for graduate research - you HAVE to read this if you are serious about fashion theory. It's really pretty accessible for a university level text; much more so than Barthe's fashion writing. So, although it's not for everyone,I found this is a clear and insightful look at the way our culture and our dress influence each other.