Product Description: The first comprehensive study on the role of Italian fashion and Italian literature, this book analyzes clothing and fashion as described and represented in literary texts and costume books in the Italy of the 16th and 17th centuries...read more

Product Description: Fashion is an economic and social force, a culture industry, a global powerhouse, a political statement. Fashion can express freedom or constriction; it can repress or liberate the body. WSQ Fashion investigates this inherently gendered issue and explores how it ignites passions, produces colossal waste, demands ruthless exclusion, and inspires hysterical devotion...read more

Prada, Gucci, Max Mara: high fashion is synonymous with luxury, glamor, pleasure, and Italy. Yet Italian fashion also has a dark history that has not previously been explored. The Fascism of 1930's Italy dominated more than just politics--it spilled over into modes of dress. Fashion under Fascism is the first book to consider this link in detail. Fashion often functions as a tacit means of making a social statement, but under Mussolini it vividly reflected political tyranny. Paulicelli explores the subtle yet sinister changes to the seemingly innocuous practices of everyday dress and shows why they were such a concern for the state. Importantly, she also demonstrates how these developments impacted on the global dominance of Italian fashion today. This fascinating book includes interviews with major designers, such as Fernanda Gattinoni and Micol Fontana, and sheds new light on the complicated relationship between style and politics.