As a key feature of modern society, fashion demands our attention. Of intrinsic interest in its own right, fashion is also central to social interaction and everyday life, and to the maintenance and reproduction of social inequalities, while the study of fashion highlights the meaning and significance of key issues, such as the nature of modernity, the contested transition from modern to postmodern society, and the structure/agency debate. Whilst it may be ever more ambiguous, the increasingly tight relationship between consumption and identity - and, more particularly, the body and identity - means that fashion is arguably of greater significance even as it ceases to refer unproblematically to core variables such as gender, ethnicity and class.
This book provides a comprehensive and systematic account of fashion in social theory that examines the strengths and limitations of classical and contemporary approaches to fashion, style and dress. By exploring and interrogating recent work on consumption, identity and the body it will provide a fully up-to-date account that incorporates important developments in related areas of academic research, and offers both an original account of fashion, style and dress, and a series of suggestions for future developments within the field.
