Fashion and Modernity

If fashion is an expression of individuality, why do we all dress alike? Can modernity be described as the experience of 'feeling modern' and, if so, what part does fashion play? Answering these intriguing questions and many more, this pioneering book shows how the concepts of fashion and modernity are intimately linked. It argues that capitalism and identity construction as social processes both have symbiotic relationships with the fashion system. Technology, the body, nationality and gender are informed and shaped by modernity, and vice versa. Drawing on key modernist texts as well as fashion theory and practice, this book seeks broadly to cover the history of fashion and modernity, a topic that has been surprisingly overlooked. Tackling themes including court masques in seventeenth-century London, Paris couturiers and forensic laboratories in twentieth-century Washington, the authors show how fashion throughout history has been a cornerstone in the construction of a modern self.

Caroline Evans is Professor Emerita of Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK.

Chris Breward is the Director of National Museums Scotland. He was trained at the Courtauld Institute and the Royal College of Art, London and has previously worked as Director of Collection and Research at the National Galleries of Scotland, Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and as Principal of Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. His published interests include the relationship between art and fashion, visual and cultural histories of masculinity, and histories of city life. He is the author of Fashioning London (Bloomsbury, 2004, reissued 2026) and co-editor of Material Memories (Bloomsbury, 1999), The Englishness of English Dress (Bloomsbury, 2002), Fashion and Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2005), Fashion's World Cities (Bloomsbury, 2006), Styling Shanghai (Bloomsbury, 2020).