Bloomsbury Fashion Central is a dynamic digital hub for interdisciplinary research in fashion and dress. Content is peer-reviewed by industry and academic experts and includes interconnected major reference works, exclusive articles, scholarly eBooks, case studies, biographies, lesson plans, bibliographic guides, textbooks, video content, runway and backstage photos from fashion shows, and tens of thousands of images from museums around the world to create a rich educational resource. It is comprised of Berg Fashion Library, Fairchild Books Library, Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases, Bloomsbury Fashion Photography Archive, Bloomsbury Fashion Video Archive and Bloomsbury Dress and Costume Library. These fully cross-searchable collections complement each other and offer enhanced content discoverability through a unified taxonomy, powerful search, and related content functionality. Read more about our collections using the links to the left.

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.

Volume II surveys the history of fashion from the nineteenth-century to the present day. Covering the period beginning with mass industry and ending with calls for sustainability, this volume challenges the meaning of modernity and modernism from a global perspective and reflects on important scholarship that has changed our understanding of the relationship between fashion and colonialism. Empires shifted and new powers rose, with fashion marking and contending with this change. The volume concludes with a critical view of fashion and globalisation, and explores the deep connections between the fashion industry, the global economy, and the politics of production and wearing in the contemporary world.

This lively survey of 150 years of fashion covers everything from Haute Couture to the High Street, and developing fabric technology from silk to fleece. From Coco Chanel to Armani and Alexander McQueen, Breward explores fashion as a cultural phenomenon. Breward examines the glamorous world of Vogue and advertising, the relationship between fashion and film, and fashion as a business, and goes beyond the surface to consider our interaction with fashion. How have our ideas about hygiene and comfort influenced the direction of style? How does our dress create our identity and status? Details of dandies, flappers, and punks are contained within a clear overview of the period which will make you look at your clothes in a different light.

This ambitious and fascinating book traces the history of fashion in every part of the world, from Greco-Roman woven-cloth clothing and the silk court dress of the Chinese Tang dynasty to contemporary sportswear designers and Japanese street culture. Organized chronologically, the book traces the evolution of fashion period by period and trend by trend, while detailed timelines provide historical and cultural context. Fashion: The Whole Story is indispensable for everyone who loves the line of a superb suit or knows the joy of wearing a great pair of shoes.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

"The field of Medieval Studies explores European and Mediterranean civilization from the 4th to the 15th centuries. This period, which has a critical importance for the understanding of Western culture, can best be approached through a combination of several disciplines, from history to literature, from art to archaeology, from religion to gender studies. As such, it is constantly responding to the emergence of new interpretations and ideas for scholars to consider. In addition to the extensive scholarship which already exists, much of the most recent work has moved online so that todays students and researchers have ready access to primary source texts and a range of other electronic resources. Managing the ever-expanding universe of scholarly information in this field of study has proved to be a monumental if not near impossible task. Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies provides students and scholars with a reliable and authoritative solution to the problem of information overload." -- Publisher