Deep History of Dress

Fashion's Evolution with Human Cognition and Culture

Inbunden, Engelska, 2027

1 649 kr

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Four thousand years ago in Babylon, a teenage scribe named Iddin-Sin wrote an indignant letter to his mother: everyone else’s clothes get better every year, but his are getting worse. This brief complaint — our earliest known fashion grievance — becomes the starting point for a new history of dress.In The Deep History of Dress, Otto von Busch reads Iddin-Sin’s letter line by line, against the backdrop of Mesopotamian cities, textile trade, law, and schooling, to suggest fashion runs deeper in Western culture than previously thought. Drawing on anthropology, sociology, and the life sciences, he argues that fashion is not a recent, shallow invention of capitalism but a deep human organ of social sensing—a way we feel hierarchy, belonging, desire, and love on the social skin of our bodies.From the deep history of cuneiform tablets to today, fashion appears here not as artifice or vanity but as a vital force—a social form in motion, a cognitive dynamic, a membrane between body and world, and a living record of civilization’s pulse. Fashion is a symbiotic organ that has grown with us, shaped us, and dreamed alongside us since the dawn of history.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2027-01-07
Mått156 x 234 x 25 mm
Vikt454 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor192
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN9781350527782

Tillhör följande kategorier

Konstteori inom Kultur
Modedesign och textilformgivning inom Kultur
Kulturvetenskap inom Samhälle och politik
Miljövetenskap och miljöpolitik inom Naturvetenskap och teknik

Otto von Busch is Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design, USA. His publications include The Psychopolitics of Fashion (2020), The Dharma of Fashion (2020), Making Trouble: Design and Material Activism (2022), the co-edited volume Silhouettes of the Soul (with Jeanine Viau, 2022), the co-authored The Corruption of Co-Design: Political and Social Conflicts in Participatory Design Thinking (with Karl Palmås, 2023), and The Design Comedy: The Descent Through Inferno (2025).

List of figuresAcknowledgements 1. “Iddin-Sin sends the following message.”A letter from Iddin-SinTeens across timeAn early fashion disputationFashion, life, and metaphorsFashion dynamicsIn search of new origins 2. “... From year to year ...”Things changeThe aliveness of fashionThe breath of seasonsFashion whiskersCaught in sensible threadsFeeling and flirting 3. “... making my clothes poorer ...”Mirroring and imitationPlaying ancient gamesLife on the edgeThe game of fashion 4. “... wool is used up like bread ...”Abundance and cultureThe fashion metabolismA feast of fashionIn the metabolism of dreams 5. “... you fuss even about a single set of clothes for me ...”Schooling the semiosphereThe school UmweltThe pecking orderIn the footprints of fashion 6. “... while you, you do not love me! ...”Fashion metamorphosisOf lamentation and longing 7. After Iddin-SinThus spoke Iddin-SinWriting out of timeBibliographyIndex