Volume 42, Number 3 · February 16, 1995

Rags!

By Diane Johnson
Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century
by Philippe Perrot, translated by Richard Bienvenu

Princeton University Press, 273 pp., $22.95

Sex and Suits
by Anne Hollander

Knopf, 212 pp., $25.00

The Afghan Amulet: Travels from the Hindu Kush to Razgrad
by Sheila Paine

St. Martin's Press/a Wyatt book, 278 pp., $21.95

Fashion, Culture, and Identity
by Fred Davis

University of Chicago Press, 226 pp., $11.95 (paper)

The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy
by Gilles Lipovetsky, translated by Catherine Porter, foreword by Richard Sennett

Princeton University Press, 276 pp., $24.95

It is strange that social scientists have paid small attention to dress, as each of these writers complains is the case. If we kept a dressing diary, the way people dieting or quitting smoking are advised to do, we would surely find that next to working, sleeping, and eating, clothes occupy most of our time. There's buying, washing, repairing, wearing, and thinking about them, and there is the vague anxiety they bring, or express, always present.



Review, 3733 words

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