Volume I surveys the long history of fashion from the ancient world to c. 1800. The volume seeks to answer fundamental questions on the origins of fashion, challenging Eurocentric explanations that the emergence of fashion was a European phenomenon and shows instead that fashion found early expressions across the globe well before the age of European colonialism and imperialism. It sheds light on how fashion was experienced in a multitude of ways depending on class, gender, and race, and despite geographical distance, fashion connected populations across the globe. Fashions flowered and were reseeded, through entanglements of empire, forced and voluntary migration, evolving racial systems, burgeoning sea travel and transcontinental systems.
FEATURING BRANDS - Agent Provocateur - Bordelle - Calvin Klein - Coco De Mer - La Fille d’O - La Perla - Mise En Cage - Nichole de Carle - Paul Seville - Dita Von Teese - Wonderbra - Zahia Dehar If you appreciate cinema classics one might be excused for thinking that our prehistoric ancestors rocked furry bikinis à lá Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C., but for the longest of times ladies have been looking for ways to support, suppress or accentuate the curves for a long time. From the origins of basic undergarments to the Victorian corset to the birth of the engineering feat of the underwire bra, that versatile undergarment that helps defy gravity. And it turns out we have ancient Egyptians to thank for it (no surprise there, Nefertiti). Egyptians wore a band of linen under their diaphanous robes to fl atten the bust line, while in China they were developing their own solutions — women wore single-pieced underpinnings that covered the breasts and belly but left the back, exposed. In fact, outerwear has always dictated the look and function of undergarments. Cretan women pretty much invented the corset to get a wasp-waisted look that predated Mae West’s hourglass fi gure by 3,000 years. But how did we get from there to La Perla and Agent Provocateur? CONTENTS INTRODUCTION A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRIEFS LINGERIE THROUGH THE DECADES THE STORY OF THE BIKINI THE MOST MEMORABLE SWIMSUIT IMAGES OF ALL TIME HISTORY OF MEN’S UNDERWEAR BRANDS OF NOTE The MASTERS OF FASHION series could well be the most extensive and complete publishing initiative ever released on this subject. This series has been created as hard cover and soft cover 280mm x 216mm colour books, ebooks and a ground breaking video rich App versions per edition coming soon for mobile devices, and a TV documentary series is also in development.