When Broadway Was the Runway: Theater, Fashion, and American Culture

Abstract

In When Broadway Was the Runway, theatre historian Mariis Schweitzer traces the emergence of this phenomenon a century earlier by examining the collaborative, and sometimes competitive, relationship between the theatre and other consumer institutions such as department stores as well as "the more intimate interactions among theatre critics, managers, advertisers, designers, performers, and authences that influenced the circulation and shaped the meaning of theatrical commodities" (10). From the "competing discourses on the relationship between art and commerce" to "the standardization and rationalization of labor processes" and from "the effect of foreign commodities on American industry" to "the growing influence of the female consumer," Schweitzer deftly explains changes in professional theatre and gender norms (14).