Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century

Skirts have been a significant and influential female fashion trend throughout the twentieth century, with suffragists, soldiers, heroines of the Civil Rights Movement, Frida Kahlo, Georgia OKeeffe, Marie Curie, and Katherine G. Johnson all wearing them. These garments have shaped contemporary fashion and opened the door for a genderfluid future, highlighting the changing fortunes, freedoms, and aspirations of women.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 17 October 2022
Publisher: St Martin's Press

The story of women's liberation has often been told through the lens of the increasing acceptance of pants over the twentieth century. However, the most significant and influential female fashions of that era were skirts. Suffragists and soldiers marched in skirts, as did the heroines of the Civil Rights Movement. Frida Kahlo and Georgia OKeeffe revolutionized modern art, and Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes in skirts. When NASA sent a man to the moon, "the computer wore a skirt," as one of those computers, mathematician Katherine G. Johnson, put it. As women made strides towards equality in the voting booth, the workforce, and the world at large, their wardrobes evolved with them. They did not need to wear pants to be powerful or progressive; the dress itself became modern as designers like Mariano Fortuny, Coco Chanel, Jean Patou, and Diane von Furstenberg redefined femininity for a new era. Skirts explores the history of twentieth-century women's wear through the lens of game-changing styles like the Little Black Dress and the Bar Suit, as well as more obscure innovations like the Taxi dress or the Popover dress, which came with a matching potholder. These influential garments illuminate the times in which they were first worn and the women who wore them, while continuing to shape contemporary fashion and even opening the door for a genderfluid future of skirts. At once an authoritative work of history and a delightfully entertaining romp through decades of fashion, Skirts charts the changing fortunes, freedoms, and aspirations of women themselves.

Weight: 300g
Dimension: 208 x 135 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781250275790