No reader of this book will ever look at a reconstructed costume in a museum or at a historical festival, or watch a film with a historic theme again without a heightened awareness of how, why, and from what sources, the costumes were reconstructed. This is not necessarily how they dressed in the past, but how the authors of this book think they dressed in the past, and why they think so. Minoan ladies, Scythian warriors, Roman and Sarmatian merchants, prehistoric weavers, gold sheet figures, Vikings, Medieval saints and sinners, Renaissance noblemen, Danish peasants, dressmakers and Hollywood stars appear in the pages of this anthology. Readers will find that through analysis of the relationship between gender and fashion, they gain a better understanding of the world around them. The essays consider how fashion can both constrict and free gender expression, explore the ways dress and gender are products of one other and illuminate the construction of gender through social norms. Next, it explores how dress can be used to contest and subvert binary gender expectations, before a final section that considers the meaning of gender and how dress can transcend it, focusing on unisex and genderless clothing. Crossing Gender Boundaries first examines how clothing has been, and continues to be, used to create and maintain the binary gender division that has come to permeate Western and westernized cultures. Through fourteen essays divided into three segments - how dress creates, disrupts and transcends gender - the chapters investigate gender issues through the lens of fashion. This volume presents a collection of the most recent knowledge on the relationship between gender and fashion in historical and contemporary contexts.
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