The Object of Fashion: Methodological Approaches to the History of Fashion
Abstract
This abstract considers the role of artefacts in the historical study of dress and fashion and suggests the existence of three different approaches. First, the field of history of dress and costume has a long tradition going back to the nineteenth century. It adopts the methodologies of art history and considers artefacts as central to the analysis of different periods and themes. Second, in the past generation the emergence of fashion studies has been interpreted by some as a distancing from artefacts. Yet, fashion studies brought theoretical rigour and embraced a deductive methodology of analysis in which artefacts played an important function. Finally, I propose what I call the: material culture of fashion, a hybrid methodology borrowed from anthropology and archeology in which the object is central to the study of social, cultural and economic practices that are time specific. The article concludes with a reflection on the challenges and rewards of such an approach.
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