Fashion & Material Culture

In this book I grapple with a problem: Is human development directional? Does human evolution move in a particular direction? In recent decades the dominant view in the various sciences...

I wrote this book because on a good day, I see myself as a collector or a pack rat and on a bad day, as a hoarder. I am increasingly...

Household Gods is a history of the British love-affair with the domestic interior from the age of mass manufacture to modernism. In no other country was domesticity so celebrated and...

How to Read A Wedding Dress is a visual, annotated history of one of life’s most symbolic and significant garments: the wedding dress. Examples focus particularly on the trend for white which became a global phenomenon from the late nineteenth century onwards...

Exemplary Things investigates the history of a Japanese cultural keyword, meibutsu, and the pervasive influence it has had in shaping consumption practices in Japan. It's a term that has no exact anglophone equivalent. Japanese commodity culture developed in the 15th century, and in Exemplary Things, I show how

In a nutshell, this richly illustrated biography explores Charlotte Brontë’s life through the garments she left behind, pieces that, until now, had remained largely unexplored.Collectively, these material witnesses...

Lipstick is really a metonym for larger systems of adornment, especially feminine adornment. Though it’s part of the Object Lessons series, the book, Lipstick, is not a comprehensive history of the object. Other books have done that quite well...

Dress, Dreams, and Desire is a book on the cultural history of fashion and psychoanalysis. It traces how psychoanalytic ideas have influenced fashion and how we interpret fashion. On the one hand, you have Freud's writings, where he barely mentions clothing or fashion at all. Just tiny little intriguing slivers, like the libido for looking, or the attraction of concealment. And yet, when you look at his ...

This book tells the story of how a small, often morally dubious, craft industry in the nineteenth century grew to be the $330 billion global powerhouse.There are many books written...

Zoot Suit is a history of one of the most famous “street styles” of the 20<sup id="">th</sup> century. With its broad shoulders, tapered long jacket, pegged pants, and swinging key...

In order to illustrate the way that a black dandy can embody complex and even competing notions of blackness, meet “Dandy Jim, from Carolina,” a theatrical figure made famous by...

The Toothpick is a technical and cultural history of what is arguably the simplest of manufactured things. A wooden toothpick consists of a single part made of a single material...

A Four-Eyed World is a cultural history of one of humanity’s greatest inventions—eyeglasses—that explores their origins, their future in technology, and more. Along the way, I look at everything from the history of deficient eyesight to the stigma surrounding glasses—how people really feel about those who wear them....

In this book I grapple with a problem: Is human development directional? Does human evolution move in a particular direction? In recent decades the dominant view in the various sciences...

I wrote this book because on a good day, I see myself as a collector or a pack rat and on a bad day, as a hoarder. I am increasingly...

Household Gods is a history of the British love-affair with the domestic interior from the age of mass manufacture to modernism. In no other country was domesticity so celebrated and...

How to Read A Wedding Dress is a visual, annotated history of one of life’s most symbolic and significant garments: the wedding dress. Examples focus particularly on the trend for white which became a global phenomenon from the late nineteenth century onwards...

Exemplary Things investigates the history of a Japanese cultural keyword, meibutsu, and the pervasive influence it has had in shaping consumption practices in Japan. It's a term that has no exact anglophone equivalent. Japanese commodity culture developed in the 15th century, and in Exemplary Things, I show how

In a nutshell, this richly illustrated biography explores Charlotte Brontë’s life through the garments she left behind, pieces that, until now, had remained largely unexplored.Collectively, these material witnesses...

Lipstick is really a metonym for larger systems of adornment, especially feminine adornment. Though it’s part of the Object Lessons series, the book, Lipstick, is not a comprehensive history of the object. Other books have done that quite well...

Dress, Dreams, and Desire is a book on the cultural history of fashion and psychoanalysis. It traces how psychoanalytic ideas have influenced fashion and how we interpret fashion. On the one hand, you have Freud's writings, where he barely mentions clothing or fashion at all. Just tiny little intriguing slivers, like the libido for looking, or the attraction of concealment. And yet, when you look at his ...

This book tells the story of how a small, often morally dubious, craft industry in the nineteenth century grew to be the $330 billion global powerhouse.There are many books written...

Zoot Suit is a history of one of the most famous “street styles” of the 20<sup id="">th</sup> century. With its broad shoulders, tapered long jacket, pegged pants, and swinging key...

In order to illustrate the way that a black dandy can embody complex and even competing notions of blackness, meet “Dandy Jim, from Carolina,” a theatrical figure made famous by...

The Toothpick is a technical and cultural history of what is arguably the simplest of manufactured things. A wooden toothpick consists of a single part made of a single material...

A Four-Eyed World is a cultural history of one of humanity’s greatest inventions—eyeglasses—that explores their origins, their future in technology, and more. Along the way, I look at everything from the history of deficient eyesight to the stigma surrounding glasses—how people really feel about those who wear them....