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Product Description The Fashioned Body provides a wide-ranging and original overview of fashion and dress from an historical and sociological perspective. Where once fashion was seen as marginal, it has now entered into core economic discourse focused around ideas about ‘cultural’ and ‘creative’ work as a major driver of developed economies. With a new preface and new material on the evolving fashion industry, this second edition gives a clear summary of the theories surrounding the role and function of fashion in modern society. Entwistle examines how fashion plays a crucial role in the formation of modern identity through its articulation of the body, gender and sexuality.The book offers a much needed synthesis between the literature on fashion and dress, and the sociology of the body, offering an updated critique of the issues raised in the first edition. Entwistle shows how an understanding of fashion and dress requires an understanding of the meanings acquired by the body in culture since it is the body that fashion speaks to and which is dressed in almost all social situations and encounters. She argues that while fashion refers to a specific system of dress originating in the west, all cultures ‘dress’ the body in the same way, making it a crucial feature of social order. Drawing on the work of theorists, the book offers insights into the connections that need to be made between the body, fashion and dress.The Fashioned Body will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the social role of fashion and dress in modern culture. Review "The Fashioned Body is a landmark text without which we might still be exploring the sartorial as pure expression of the zeitgeist, never considering fashion wearers. Instead, in this beautifully written account, fashion emerges as a negotiation between designers and wearers in which the physical body is central. Updated and with new substantive sections on space and urban geography and the ‘aesthetic economy’, this second edition charts the rise of fashion from peculiarity of Western modernity to its centrality in contemporary global cultural economies. It explores fashion’s gendered investments in debates about both ‘pornification’ and modesty and crucially frames fashion as ‘situated bodily practice’." Ruth Holliday, University of Leeds "This is a timely and much-awaited new edition of The Fashioned Body, a path-breaking book that conjoined fashion, dress and the body in new and exciting ways. The new edition clearly demonstrates the value of drawing together complex, interdisciplinary literatures to explore and expose the making and shaping of fashion markets. The new emphasis on the ways in which clothing is always embodied, contingent and context specific adds considerably to our understanding of fashion practice. Entwistle weaves together a powerful narrative of how magic and meaning, design and desire are conjoined with market mechanisms and regulatory regimes to produce fashion. By addressing the complex and interwoven amalgam of production, consumption, creativity and constraint, Entwistle reveals the alchemy that is contemporary fashion. A must-read for anyone interested in the making and shaping of fashioned bodies." Louise Crewe, University of Nottingham About the Author Jo Entwistle is Senior Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London.