Hazel Clark and Cheryl Buckley

Fashion and Everyday Life: London and New York

Taking cultural theorist Michel de Certeau's notion of "the everyday" as a critical starting point, this book considers how fashion shapes and is shaped by everyday life. The authors explore the part played by fashion in everyday routines, such as going to work and shopping, and in leisure activities, like dancing, through history. In the process, they define the "fashion system of the ordinary," in which clothing has a distinct role in the making of self and identity.

Exploring the period from 1890 to 2010, the study focuses on London and New York, cities that emerged as socially, ethnically, and culturally diverse centers of fashion. The book redirects fashion discourse from examination of familiar power dynamics toward a re-evaluation of time, memory, and history and their relationship to fashion and everyday life. The role of place and space and of gender, race, and social class provides the broad framework, revealing fashion as both routine and exceptional and as an increasingly significant part of urban life.

By focusing on themes such as clothing the city, street fashion, and the creation and performance of identities through dressing up and down, going out, and showing off, Fashion and Everyday Life makes a unique contribution to the literature of fashion studies, fashion history, and cultural studies. View this publication.