The Languages of Fashion

The Languages of Fashion

Lexicon, Sources, and New Perspectives

How do we “read” a garment? What words do we need to describe it, which archives preserve its history, and which images and stories have shaped its meaning?

The Languages of Fashion is a resource for anyone who studies or works in fashion, or is simply passionate about it. The book brings together a lexicon of specialized terminology, an annotated guide to sources (handbooks and dictionaries, costume books, theoretical texts, online resources, works of art, fashion plates, fashion magazines, fashion photography, fashion journalism, fashion exhibitions, archival sources, sumptuary laws, literary sources, films, TV series, and documentaries), and a journey through some of the countercultures that transformed the way we dress, from the eighteenth-century Macaroni to the digital aesthetics of vaporwave. The final section addresses today’s most pressing questions, from Global Fashion History to the relationship between fashion and artificial intelligence.

The book draws on the experience of Alessandra Galasso, exhibition curator, writer, and lecturer who teaches art and costume history, art semiotics, and cultural anthropology at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, in Milan.

PDF format, 300 pages, with color images.