Aside from the occasional nod to epaulettes or use of camouflage war and fashion seem to be strange partners. Not so argue the contributors to this book who connect military industrial practices as well as military dress to textile and clothing in new ways. For instance the book includes a series of commentaries on the impact of military dress in the airline industry in illustrated wartime comics and even considers today’s muscled soldier’s body as a new type of uniform. Elsewhere the effects of conquest introduce a new set of postcolonial aesthetics as military and colonial regimes disrupt local textile production and garment making. In another chapter it is argued that textiles and fashion are important because they reflect a core practice one that bridges textile artists and designers in an expressive creative and deeply physical way to matters of cultural significance. And the book concludes by calling the very mode of 'military chic' into ethical question.

The premier text to illustrate the impact of war on textiles bodies costume art and design Fashion & War in Popular Culture will be warmly welcomed by scholars of fashion design and theory historians of fashion and those interested in theories of warfare and military science.

Fashion and Ethics focuses on issues of power social positioning and practices among creators producers practitioners wearers and consumers of fashion. With a special emphasis on the moral fabric of clothing contributors to the book offer a critique of some of the fundamental assumptions of ethical fashion and expose how products are often framed as fair trade in order to relieve consumers' guilt.



With essays that problematize issues such as ethical fashion’s self-appointed morality the first-world notion that the environment should take priority over human development the conflict between business profit and ethics the unintended agendas involved in consuming green cosmetics or ethical culinary trends and the discursive strategies of denial of the extreme cruelty in the procurement of animal skin and fur for use in fashion Fashion and Ethics applies its uncompromising scrutiny to all areas of fashion. Throughout the volume forces readers to confront the question: Does ethical fashion go deep enough into challenging unethical behaviour or is it just a charade of good intentions?

Shanghai Street Style marks the inaugural volume in an exciting new street style series from Intellect. With an array of up-and-coming young designers like Coko Wan Nio and Helen Lee Shanghai is swiftly cementing its status as a global fashion destination – its first fashion week was in 2011 – and this book brings together more than one hundred full-colour photographs showcasing the remarkable diversity of styles seen on its streets. Alongside the photographs are short pieces of critical commentary by Vicki Karaminas and Toni Johnson-Woods shedding light on the city's changing culture and how this is expressed through the clothing choices of ordinary city-dwellers going about their daily routines. The result is a stunning street-level look at the trends shaping Shanghai's fascinating fashion scene with interesting echoes of East meets West and old meets new.

Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty brings together articles from the first volume of this cutting-edge journal—which is also the first of its kind in the field. Taken together the pieces collected here offer a snapshot of critical debate in fashion a growing area of scholarly interest.

The volume’s contributors who come from disciplines across the humanities and social sciences explore such topics as fashion trends in a global context including contemporary Italian fashion identity the kimono’s metamorphoses the dynamics of luxury and basic fashion after the recent economic crisis and the negotiation through fashion of social class and feminine identity. Their collective efforts contribute to the journal’s mission: the examination of fashion and beauty systems as symbolic spaces of production reproduction representation and communication of artifacts; meanings; social practices; and renditions of cloth clothing and appearance. Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty will therefore interest scholars of fashion and anyone looking for an introduction to this dynamic area of inquiry.

When political and civil unrest threatened France’s social order in the 1950s French cinema provided audiences a unique form of escapism from such troubled times: a nostalgic look back to the France of the nineteenth century with costume dramas set in the age of Napoleon and the Belle Époque. Film critics however have routinely dismissed this period of French cinema overlooking a very important period of political cultural history. French Costume Drama of the 1950s redresses this balance exploring a diverse range of films including Guitry’s Napoléon (1955) Vernay’s Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1943) and Becker’s Casque d’Or (1952) to expose the political cultural paradox between nostalgia for a lost past and the drive for modernization.

Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty is the first journal dedicated to the critical examination of the fashion and the beauty systems as symbolic spaces of production and reproduction representation and communication of artifacts meanings social practices and visual or textual renditions of cloth clothing and appearance.