A Dangerous Dress

If there’s one dress that could make Jane Stuart think that anything is possible, it’s her late grandmother’s vintage 1920s Parisian dress. And when the dress becomes her ticket out of Kirland, Indiana, Jane takes her first tentative steps on her own reckless, passionate, and oh-so-dangerous adventure....

Four best friends--Lucy, whose marriage is crumbling; Sarah, an actress in danger of losing her socialite standing; Billy, an aspiring cuisine artist; and Lotta, a party-girl art dealer--endure a sweltering Manhattan summer marked by self-destructivenessand the end of their carefree years.

A probing and timely look at how American cities can achieve sustainability in the face of decline

Written by renowned fashion authority Valerie Steele, this beautiful volume is a visual celebration of the red dress throughout fashion history. It provides an informative, entertaining discussion of the power of red in our culture and in fashion, then showcases over eighty stunning dresses, from medieval attire to the latest looks on the catwalk. Uniquely designed page after page, The Red Dress presents these distinctive dresses in an elegant and varied blend of four-color photographs and illustrations by the world's foremost artists, fashion photographers, and illustrators. In addition to featuring the work of the world's top designers, it also includes paintings, lithographs, vintage advertisements, and magazine covers--all stellar examples of how the red dress has captured the popular imagination for centuries. Filled with vibrant imagery from all walks of fashion past and present, this definitive book is the first of its kind to pay tribute to the glamour, mystery, and dynamism of this style classic. Featuring the work of the world's finest fashion designers, photographers, and illustrators, this elegant volume celebrates the eternal magnificence of the seductive and sophisticated red dress throughout fashion history.

This volume examines the dynamic relationship between the body, clothing, and identity in sub-Saharan Africa and raises questions that have previously been directed almost exclusively to a Western and urban context. Unusual in its treatment of the body surface as a critical frontier in the production and authentification of identity, Clothing and Difference shows how the body and its adornment have been used to construct and contest social and individual identities in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, and other African societies during both colonial and post-colonial times. Grounded in the insights of anthropology and history and influenced by developments in cultural studies, these essays investigate the relations between the personal and the public, and between ideas about the self and those about the family, gender, and national groups. They explore the bodily and material creation of the changing identities of women, spirits, youths, ancestors, and entrepreneurs through a consideration of topics such as fashion, spirit possession, commodity exchange, hygiene, and mourning. By taking African societies as its focus, Clothing and Difference demonstrates that factors considered integral to Western social development--heterogeneity, migration, urbanization, transnational exchange, and media representation--have existed elsewhere in different configurations and with different outcomes. With significance for a wide range of fields, including gender studies, cultural studies, art history, performance studies, political science, semiotics, economics, folklore, and fashion and textile analysis/design, this work provides alternative views of the structures underpinning Western systems of commodification, postmodernism, and cultural differentiation. Contributors. Misty Bastian, Timothy Burke, Hildi Hendrickson, Deborah James, Adeline Masquelier, Elisha Renne, Johanna Schoss, Brad Weiss