NYU Press Fashion: An Introduction

From the rise of the Fashion Café to the phenomenon of the supermodel, from "House of Style" to "Unzipped," the world of fashion has taken center stage in contemporary culture, for better or for worse. In turn, although the idea of fashion has been in circulation since time immemorial, not until recently has its profound and variegated effects-on economic activity, on social and sexual mores, and on aesthetic and psychological formulations-been fully considered. With delicacy and wit, Fashion: An Introduction investigates the different sides of recent debates over the production, marketing, and consumption of fashion. Drawing on economics, art, psychology, commerce, history, and the everyday, Joanne Finkelstein considers fashion in its various guises-as body decoration and costume, as a language and a form of display, as an expression of sexuality and as part of the urban experience. In so doing, she has given us the perfect introduction to fashion's social, economic, and aesthetic impact on the way we think and act. Review "Women criminals have rarely been studied; they have been rendered invisible in all but a few sensationalized cases. . . . women who are non-traditional are labeled as deviant; some are called mad' and locked up in mental institutions while other are labeled bad' and incarcerated. Women and Crime is filled with examples of how this occurs. . . . Heidensohn richly analyzes the popular feminist critique of traditional criminology. -"Contemporary Psychology", About the Author Joanne Finkelstein teaches sociology and cultural studies at Monash University. She is the author of Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners, The Fashioned Self, and Slaves of Chic: An A-Z of Consumer Pleasures.