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Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing. By Diana Crane. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. x, 294 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-226-11798-7.)
A Perfect Fit. Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America. By Jenna Weissman Joselit. (New York: Metropolitan, 2001. 257 pp. $26.00, ISBN 0-8050-5488-X.)
It seems surprising that historians have not paid more attention to the fashion world. Material culture is now an acceptable tool for historical analysis, but the material of the fashion world is usually given only token attention.
Diana Crane's Fashion and Its Social Agendas and Jenna Weissman Joselit's A Perfect Fit are, however, welcome corrections to this oversight.
These two books are for different audiences and achieve different ends. Joselit's A Perfect Fit is written for a large market. Her style is breezy and anecdotal, with an emphasis on middle-class fashion and popular culture. In contrast, Crane's study, Fashion and Its Social Agendas, is a thoroughly scholarly treatment, exploring both working-class and high-style fashion.
Joselit's A Perfect Fit is a delight. The author's wit, verve, and excellent writing make this book a joy to read. A Perfect Fit records the vagaries and sometimes nonsensical aspects of fashion pitted against the moralistic and pious spokesmen for propriety. Yet fashion often mirrored serious dialogues within society itself. Consider this offhand statement:
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Ruth D. Howland sued her husband for divorce on the grounds that he...