Full Description
How does a country dress itself? From Montreal's 'Retail Mile,' to Ontario's millinery trade, to how war and television can effect the garment industry or whether tailoring can make a cultural impact, Alexandra Palmer gathers together some of the top curators, designers, fashion writers, historians, and artists in the country to create a truly dynamic and thought-provoking collection of essays.
Controversial and unconventional, Fashion: A Canadian Perspective challenges readers to consider aspects of Canadian identity in terms of what its citizenship has chosen to wear for the last three centuries, and the internal and external influences of those socio-cultural decisions. Covering a broad range of topics — such as the iconic Hudson Bay Blanket Coats, garment factories of the late 1800s, specific Canadian fashion couturiers whose influences reach international stages, and the contemporary role of fashion journalists and their effect on trends — this collection breaks new ground in producing multiple perspectives on fashion and fashion dress.
In a country that has given birth to such global fashion corporations as Club Monaco, Roots, and MAC, Fashion: A Canadian Perspective develops the first intriguing and readable historiography that links past to future, couture vision to trade trends, and heritage costuming to FashionTelevision.
Contents
Introduction
Alexandra Palmer
Fashion Identity
'Very Picturesque and Very Canadian': The Blanket Coat and Anglo-Canadian Identity in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century - Eileen Stack
Dressing Up: A Consuming Passion - Cynthia Cooper
Defrocking Dad: Masculinity and Dress in Montreal, 1700-1867 - Jan Noel
The Association of Canadian Coutouriers - Alexandra Palmer
Fashion, Trade, and Consumption
Shop and Factory: The Ontario Millinery Trade in Transition, 1870-1930 - Tina Bates
'The Work Being Chiefly Performed by Women: Female Workers in the Garment Industry in Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1871 - Peter J. Larocque
Three Thousand Stitches: The Development of the Clothing Industry in Nineteenth-Century Halifax - M. Elaine Mackay
Enduring Roots: Gibb and Co. and the Nineteenth-Century Tailoring Trade in Montreal - Gail Cariou
Montreal's Fashion Mile: St Gathering Street, 1890-1930 - Elizabeth Sifton
Fashion and Transition
Dress Reform in Nineteenth-Century Canada - Barbara E. Kelcey
Fashion and War in Canada, 1939-1945 - Susan Turnbull Caton
Fashion and Refuge: The Jean Harris Salon, 1941-1961 - Lydia Ferrabee Sharman
Fashion and Journalism
Laced in and Let Down: Women's Fashion Features in the Toronto Daily Press, 1890-1900 - Barbara M. Freeman
The Fashion of Writing, 1985-2000: Fashion-themed Televisions Impact on the Canadian Fashion Press - Deborah Pulsang
A Little on the Wild Side: Baton's Prestige Fashion Advertising Published in the Montreal Gazette, 1952-1972 - Katherine Bosnitch
