Chicago S Fashion History

From the ashes of the Chicago Fire of 1871 came the birth of the city's fashion scene as entrepreneurs built new storefronts virtually overnight. Aided by the Windy City's incredible network of railroads, these fledgling enterprises in turn created millionaires who wanted to wear the latest clothes from Europe. Marshall Fields and Potter Palmer were among the local elites who regularly boarded ships to France and returned with exquisite suits, coats, hats, gowns, fabrics, and other accessories, which designers sought to re-create with cheaper fabrics and labor. Chicago's reputation as a trendsetting metropolis was only sealed by the city's film industry. Charlie Chaplin and his cast of stylish starlets had women north and south of Madison Street copying every hairdo and dress. Even after moviemaking moved to Los Angeles, actors and actresses traveling to New York City regularly dropped in when they switched trains downtown. By World War II, Chicago, the "City of Big Shoulders," became the place to start a career as a fashion designer.

From the ashes of the Chicago Fire of 1871 came the birth of the city’s fashion scene as entrepreneurs built new storefronts virtually overnight. Aided by the Windy City’s incredible network of railroads, these fledgling enterprises in turn created millionaires who wanted to wear the latest clothes from Europe. Marshall Fields and Potter Palmer were among the local elites who regularly boarded ships to France and returned with exquisite suits, coats, hats, gowns, fabrics, and other accessories, which designers sought to re-create with cheaper fabrics and labor. Chicago’s reputation as a trendsetting metropolis was only sealed by the city’s film industry. Charlie Chaplin and his cast of stylish starlets had women north and south of Madison Street copying every hairdo and dress. Even after moviemaking moved to Los Angeles, actors and actresses traveling to New York City regularly dropped in when they switched trains downtown. By World War II, Chicago, the “City of Big Shoulders,” became the place to start a career as a fashion designer.

It has long been said that clothes make the man (or woman), but is it still true today? If so, how has the information clothes convey changed over the years? Using a wide range of historical and contemporary materials, Diana Crane demonstrates how the social significance of clothing has been transformed. Crane compares nineteenth-century societies—France and the United States—where social class was the most salient aspect of social identity signified in clothing with late twentieth-century America, where lifestyle, gender, sexual orientation, age, and ethnicity are more meaningful to individuals in constructing their wardrobes. Today, clothes worn at work signify social class, but leisure clothes convey meanings ranging from trite to political. In today's multicode societies, clothes inhibit as well as facilitate communication between highly fragmented social groups. Crane extends her comparison by showing how nineteenth-century French designers created fashions that suited lifestyles of Paris elites but that were also widely adopted outside France. By contrast, today's designers operate in a global marketplace, shaped by television, film, and popular music. No longer confined to elites, trendsetters are drawn from many social groups, and most trends have short trajectories. To assess the impact of fashion on women, Crane uses voices of college-aged and middle-aged women who took part in focus groups. These discussions yield fascinating information about women's perceptions of female identity and sexuality in the fashion industry. An absorbing work, Fashion and Its Social Agendas stands out as a critical study of gender, fashion, and consumer culture. "Why do people dress the way they do? How does clothing contribute to a person's identity as a man or woman, as a white-collar professional or blue-collar worker, as a preppie, yuppie, or nerd? How is it that dress no longer denotes social class so much as lifestyle? . . . Intelligent and informative, [this] book proposes thoughtful answers to some of these questions."-Library Journal

Ready-Made Democracy explores the history of men's dress in America to consider how capitalism and democracy emerged at the center of American life during the century between the Revolution and the Civil War. Michael Zakim demonstrates how clothing initially attained a significant place in the American political imagination on the eve of Independence. At a time when household production was a popular expression of civic virtue, homespun clothing was widely regarded as a reflection of America's most cherished republican values: simplicity, industriousness, frugality, and independence. By the early nineteenth century, homespun began to disappear from the American material landscape. Exhortations of industry and modesty, however, remained a common fixture of public life. In fact, they found expression in the form of the business suit. Here, Zakim traces the evolution of homespun clothing into its ostensible opposite—the woolen coats, vests, and pantaloons that were "ready-made" for sale and wear across the country. In doing so, he demonstrates how traditional notions of work and property actually helped give birth to the modern industrial order. For Zakim, the history of men's dress in America mirrored this transformation of the nation's social and material landscape: profit-seeking in newly expanded markets, organizing a waged labor system in the city, shopping at "single-prices," and standardizing a business persona. In illuminating the critical links between politics, economics, and fashion in antebellum America, Ready-Made Democracy will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of the United States and in the creation of modern culture in general.

Tells the remarkable story of Chicago women who purchased and wore high fashion in the hope of claiming Chicago as chic.

“A remarkable story that moves from nineteenth-century England to today’s global ecological concerns around fast fashion.” —Times Literary Supplement Starting in the early 1800s, shoddy was the name given to a new material made from reclaimed wool, and to one of the earliest forms of industrial recycling. Old rags and leftover fabric clippings were ground to bits by a machine known as “the devil” and then reused. Usually undisclosed, shoddy—also known as reworked wool—became suit jackets, army blankets, mattress stuffing, and much more. Shoddy is the afterlife of rags. And Shoddy, the book, reveals hidden worlds of textile intrigue. Hanna Rose Shell takes us on a journey from Haiti to the “shoddy towns” of West Yorkshire in England, to the United States, back in time to the British cholera epidemics and the American Civil War, and into agricultural fields, textile labs, and rag-shredding factories. The narrative is both literary and historical, drawing on an extraordinary range of sources from court cases to military uniforms, mattress labels to medical textbooks, political cartoons to high art, and bringing richly drawn characters and unexpected objects to life. Along the way, shoddy becomes equally an evocative object and a portal into another world. Shell exposes an interwoven tale of industrial espionage, political infighting, scientific inquiry, ethnic prejudices, and war profiteering, and shows how, over the past century, the shredding “devil” has moved from wool to synthetics such as nylon stockings and Kevlar. The use of the term “virgin” wool emerged as an effort by the wool industry to counter shoddy’s appeal: to make shoddy seem . . . well, shoddy. Over time, the word would become a synonym for “inferior” and describe a host of personal, ethical, commercial, and societal failings. And yet, there was always, within shoddy, the alluring concept of regeneration—of what we today think of as conscious clothing, eco-fashion, or sustainable textiles. “In a brilliantly quixotic, scholarly rich, fabulously illustrated trek, Shell guides readers through the history of the reprocessing of used clothing and textiles, reflecting on human ornament, fears of contagion (think of the associations of ‘shoddy’ versus ‘virgin’ wool), and the evolution of a vast industry.” —Harvard Magazine “The fascinating story of how a respectable textile product became synonymous with all things inferior . . . . a fun ride.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

Over the last century there has been a complete transformation of the fashion system. The unitary top-down fashion cycle has been replaced by the pulsations of multiple and simultaneous styles, while the speed of global production and circulation has become ever faster and more complex. Running in tandem, the development of artificial fibres has revolutionized the composition of clothing, and the increased focus on youth, sexuality, and the body has radically changed its design. From the 1920s flapper dress to debates over the burkini, fashion has continued to be deeply involved in society's larger issues. Drawing on a wealth of visual, textual and object sources and illustrated with 100 images, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Modern Age presents essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations to illustrate the diversity and cultural significance of dress and fashion in the period.

Los Angeles is undergoing a makeover. Leaving behind its image as all freeways and suburbs, sunshine and noir, it is reinventing itself for the twenty-first century as a walkable, pedestrian friendly, ecologically healthy, and global urban hotspot of fashion and style, while driving initiatives to rejuvenate its downtown core, public spaces, and ethnic neighborhoods. By providing a locational history of Los Angeles fashion and style mythologies through the lens of institutions such as manufacturing, museums, and designers and readings of contemporary film, literature and new media, L.A. Chic provides an in-depth analysis of the social changes, urban processes, desires, and politics that inform how the good life is being re-imagined in Los Angeles. Throughout the book, Susan Ingram and Markus Reisenleitner dig up submerged and marginalized elements of the city's cultural history but also tap into the global circuits of urban affect that are being mobilized for promoting L.A. as an example for the global, multi-ethnic city of the future. Engagingly written, highly visual, and featuring numerous photographs throughout, L.A. Chic will appeal to any culturally inclined reader with an interest in Los Angeles, its cultural history, and modern urban style.