Dress Casual
How College Students Redefined American Style
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
As Deirdre Clemente shows in this lively history of fashion on American college campuses, whether it’s jeans and sneakers or khakis with a polo shirt, chances are college kids made it cool. The modern casual American wardrobe, Clemente argues, was born in the classrooms, dormitories, fraternity and sorority houses, and gyms of universities and colleges across the country. As young people gained increasing social and cultural clout during the early twentieth century, their tastes transformed mainstream fashion from collared and corseted to comfortable. From east coast to west and from the Ivy League to historically black colleges and universities, changing styles reflected new ways of defining the value of personal appearance, and, by extension, new possibilities for creating one’s identity.
The pace of change in fashion options, however, was hardly equal. Race, class, and gender shaped the adoption of casual style, and young women faced particular backlash both from older generations and from their male peers. Nevertheless, as coeds fought dress codes and stereotypes, they joined men in pushing new styles beyond the campus, into dance halls, theaters, homes, and workplaces. Thanks to these shifts, today’s casual style provides a middle ground for people of all backgrounds, redefining the meaning of appearance in American culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her impressive first book, University of Nevada-Las Vegas historian Clemente examines the ways in which 20th-century college students have used their clothes to challenge the constructs of American society. The author posits that pushing the boundaries of social mores through casual dress is a phenomenon that must be credited to university students rather than "Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and even Parisian couturiers." States Clemente, "the shift from collared to comfortable came amid the kind of sweeping social change" that included "two waves of American feminism, one Depression, two world wars, six decades of civil rights, and the movement of millions of families into the suburbs." Clemente neatly breaks down the casual dress movement, with chapters focusing on a specific area of college life. Using quotes from students across the decades, dress codes from colleges nationwide, published articles on what was considered de rigueur for the time, as well as photos and illustrations, Clemente drives home her point that the simple decision of choosing what to wear can be anything but simple. 25 illus.
