Colors in Fashion

Color speaks a powerful cultural language, conveying political, sexual, and economic messages that, throughout history, have revealed how we relate to ourselves and our world. This ground-breaking compilation is the first to investigate how color in fashionable and ceremonial dress has played a significant social role, indicating acceptance and exclusion, convention and subversion. From the use of white in pioneering feminism to the penchant for black in post-war France, and from mystical scarlet broadcloth to the horrors of arsenic-laden green fashion, this publication demonstrates that color in dress is never straightforward. Divided into four parts solidarity, power, innovation, and desire each section highlights the often violent, emotional histories of color in dress across geographical, temporal and cultural boundaries. Underlying todays relaxed attitude to color lies a chromatic complexity that speaks of wars, migrations and economics. Bringing together cutting-edge chapters from leading scholars, it is essential reading for students of fashion, textiles, design, cultural studies and art history.