From nineteenth-century broad arrows and black and white stripes to twenty first-century orange jumpsuits,  prison clothing has both mirrored and bolstered the power of penal institutions over prisoners’ lives. Vividly illustrated and based on original research, including  throughout the voices of the incarcerated,  this book is a pioneering history and investigation of prison dress, which demystifies the experience of what it is like to be an imprisoned criminal. Juliet Ash takes the reader on a journey from the production of prison clothing to the bodies of its wearers. She uncovers a history characterized by waves of  reform, sandwiched between regimes that use clothing as punishment and discovers  how inmates use their dress to surmount, subvert or survive these punishment cultures. She reveals the hoods, the masks, and pink boxer shorts, near nakedness, even twenty first-century ""civvies"" to be not  just other types of uniform but political embodiments of the surveillance of  everyday life.

Product Description: This collection of essays goes beyond the history of fashion to reveal the underlying financial and political forces that shape it, showing how fashion relates to the economic realities and motivations of those who create what we buy and wear...read more

Product Description: Challenges the view of the fashion industry as solely a service or 'glamour industry' offering in its place a more searching analysis in the context of its social, cultural and economic history. This book should be of interest to students in fashion and design; practising designers...read more