Patricia Anne Cunningham

Dress in American Culture Patricia Anne Cunningham Illustrated edition

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references; Introduction / Patricia Cunningham and Susan Voso Lab -- From moccasins to frock coats and back again: ethnic identity and native American dress in Southern New England / Linda Welters -- Dress for the Ohio pioneers / Carolyn R. Shine -- Nineteenth-century African-American dress / Barbara M. Starke -- The American cowboy: development of the mythic image / Laurel Wilson -- From folk to fashion: dress adaptations of Norwegian immigrant women in the Midwest / Patricia Williams -- Dressing the colonial past: nineteenth century New Englanders look back / Beverly Gordon -- The gym suit: freedom at last / Patricia Campbell Warner -- Simplicity of dress: a symbol of American ideals / Patricia A. Cunningham -- War drobe and World War I / Susan Voso Lab. Publisher Marketing: Early Americans accommodated, adapted, and manipulated their clothing to adjust to their physical and social environment. This book focuses on the relationship of dress to the struggle of indigenous and immigrant Americans to fill expected and unexpected needs and express political ideologies and ethnic identity. In doing so the contributors hope to prompt readers to reconsider the place of dress in the interpretation of American culture. The casual reader of this book of essays may be surprised to learn that it has little to do with different styles of clothing or the vagaries of fashion. The contributors reveal the politics, or power, of dress, especially in its function as a symbol of American ideals, and examine changes in clothing behavior that occurred as Americans faced new experiences.

Contributor Bio:  Cunningham, Patricia A Linda Welters is Professor in the Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design, University of Rhode Island and is also the Editor-in-chief of "Dress," the journal of the Costume Society of America. Patricia A. Cunningham is Associate Professor in the Department of Consumer and Textile Sciences, Ohio State University.