A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America - Hardcover

Joselit, Jenna Weissman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080505488X ISBN 13: 9780805054880

Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 2001

Synopsis

A striking and inventive social history of the role of clothing in the making of modern Americans.

While fashions of the rich and famous have been lessly chronicled, little attention has been paid to the meaning of clothes for everyone else. Yet between 1890 and the outbreak of World War II, as ready-to-wear came into its own, the clothes of ordinary Americans claimed the nation's attention. Allied with civic virtue, fashion now played an increasingly important role in shaping the national character.

Drawing on a wealth of sources -- from advertisements, trade journals, and health manuals to sermons, science, and songs -- acclaimed historian Jenna Weissman Joselit shows how the length of a woman's skirt, the shape of a man's hat, and the height of a pair of heels enabled Americans of every faith, color, and class to feel part of the modern nation. As moral arbiters warned that extravagant attire might undermine equality, and gentlemen worried that wearing colored shirts rered them less manly, the newly arrived and newly emancipated -- immigrants and African-Americans -- wondered just how much jewelry was appropriate to their new status as citizens. Engaging, imaginative, and original, A Perfect Fit uncovers a time in American history when getting dressed was more about fitting in than standing out and vividly shows how clothes expressed the spirit of democracy and the promise of America.

About this title

About the Author

Jenna Weissman Joselit is currently visiting professor of American studies at Princeton University and the author of numerous works of cultural history, including The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture 1880-1950 (winner of the Jewish Book Award in History). Joselit has also curated and consulted on more than thirty exhibitions throughout the country. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

From the 1890s to the 1930s, social historian Joselit (The Wonders of America) argues in this enticingly illustrated volume, fashion was "the most literal expression of who we were as a nation." In an increasingly diverse society, fashion was billed as a unifying force, she argues; its arbiters promised that anyone, from Jewish ghetto girls to ex-slaves, could blend in by wearing the right clothes. To make her case, Joselit quotes from the Ladies' Home Journal, Vogue and other magazines, on everything from women's hemlines to men's suits, shoes to hats, furs to jewelry. Though she also quotes rabbis, popes and advice columnists, as well as merchants like Henri Bendel, she doesn't include many working girls or sales figures from Sears or Woolworth's. More research is needed to prove that ordinary Americans believed fashion's promises. Still, Joselit's book is enjoyable a fluffy history lite, with a liberal smattering of turn-of-the-century advertisements for corsets and collars. Joselit is stronger as a museum curator than a historian, yielding a book that's far more stimulating visually than intellectually. Indeed, there's nothing new here the "democratization of style" has been well documented by other fashion historians for years. Readers interested in this particular subject would be better served by Claudia Kidwell's works, or even Kennedy Frazier's. Illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Broad changes in social attitudes have a corresponding impact in the way we dress the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, for example, showed itself in tie-dyed shirts, bell-bottoms, platform shoes, and long hair for both sexes. Joselit (American studies, Princeton Univ.) looks back at an earlier, particularly important period in American history, considering significant changes in both dress and social attitudes from about 1890 to 1925. Broadly speaking, conformity in dress declined, reflecting greater wealth, personal freedom, and social mobility. Women abandoned heavy corsetry and voluminous dresses, for instance, just as they were gaining suffrage. Attentive to the experiences of immigrants and African Americans, the author studies the attitudes of the people, their media, and those in authority toward changes in dress. While Joselit happily does not neglect men's dress, which changed greatly during the period, shifts in children's dress, which reflected transformations in child-rearing attitudes, are omitted from discussion. Well written and researched, this study will reward casual and scholarly readers equally. Recommended for both public and academic libraries. James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Why our continued fascination with clothes? Simply the aesthetics? Perhaps just the frivolity of human nature? From a historian's perspective, Joselit examines different articles of clothing and their meanings to American men and women from the 1890s to the 1930s, including immigrants aspiring to blend in. Anecdotes sustain reader interest. For instance, second-hand garments were in considerable demand before the proliferation of ready-to-wear, with one enterprising merchant claiming $3 million in annual sales at the turn of the century. Catalogue illustrations and sepia-like photographs further enliven the text, as do the sprinklings of quotes. Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080505488X
• ISBN 13: 9780805054880
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 228