Richard Thompson Ford | Simon & Schuster, 2021 | Book
Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History
This is my book-length treatment of the subject, tracing the importance of laws, rules and social norms regarding clothing from the “birth of fashion” in the late Middle Ages to the present day.
Anne Hollander | Claridge Press, 1994 | Book
Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress
Hollander was an art historian and she brings her expertise to bear on the relationship between clothing and the modern sensibility. Brilliant insights into how fashion shapes and reflects gender and social class.
JC Flugel | International Universities Press, 1971 | Book
The Psychology of Clothes
An early 20th-century advocate for dress reform, Flugel was the first to identify and explain the 18th-century shift in men’s attire from conspicuous adornment to understatement and sobriety. He explains the relationship between fashion, gender and political ideals. I particularly recommend the chapter “The Great Masculine Renunciation and Its Causes.”
Roland Barthes | Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983 | Book
The Fashion System
The great French philosopher, social critic and semiotician analyzes fashion as a system of communication.