Skirts

Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century

De: Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell

Narrado por: Sarah Welborn

In a sparkling social history, Skirts traces the shifting roles of women over the twentieth century through the era's most iconic and influential dresses.

While the story of women's liberation has often been framed by the growing acceptance of pants over the twentieth century, the most important and influential female fashions of the era featured skirts. Suffragists and soldiers marched in skirts; the heroines of the Civil Rights Movement took a stand in skirts. As women made strides towards equality in the vote, the workforce, and the world at large, their wardrobes evolved with them.

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell's Skirts looks at the history of twentieth-century womenswear through the lens of game-changing styles like the little black dress and the Bar Suit, as well as more obscure innovations like the Taxi dress or the Pop-Over dress, which came with a matching potholder. These influential garments illuminate the times in which they were first worn—and the women who wore them—while continuing to shape contemporary fashion and even opening the door for a genderfluid future of skirts. At once an authoritative work of history and a delightfully entertaining romp through decades of fashion, Skirts charts the changing fortunes, freedoms, and aspirations of women themselves.

©2022 Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell (P)2022 Tantor

Interesting and Informative

I am not usually one for anything related to fashion. While Skirts is a history and the evolvement of women's wear...it is also about the struggle of women with regard to their femininity and place in a man's world. My favorite portion of this was when the author described the tennis clothing "war". I laughed a few times during this section.

I received and E-ARC for this one and will definitely need to check out the physical. I missed all of the beautiful pictures this is said to have. Despite not having these visuals, this was a very interesting and well done book. There was so much I didn't know about the history of women's clothing, and really enjoyed this one.

I appreciate St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the review copy. All opinions are my own.