Fashion and feminism have an uneasy relationship; the strictures of the former, which are disproportionately directed at women, tend to serve as an affront to the latter. What a treat for feminist fashionistas--and a pleasure for any follower of fashion--to be able to turn to Véronique Hyland's Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink. Hyland's debut book celebrates the style industry while scrutinizing what clothes say about gender, class and power.
These 15 canny essays offer both a historical overview and a present-day status report. There are thoughts on shapewear, the politician's wardrobe and the endurance of the It girl. Hyland is an omnivorous cultural observer: references to literature, film and art abound, and she quotes philosophers, academics and theorists to bolster her points. In an essay on blending high and low culture in fashion, a reference to the work of French theorist Pierre Bourdieu runs easily into a paragraph discussing Shiv Roy's wardrobe on Succession.
Hyland, the fashion features director for Elle magazine, has a historian's perspective ("Corsets would be reborn as waist trainers; girdles were reincarnated as Spanx") and a small-d democratic outlook: with Dress Code, she may well convince her readers that everyone has a stake in fashion and that what one wears "means something. Even if you're 'just' wearing jeans and a T-shirt." Dress Code will be equally at home on a shelf beside Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth and on a coffee table atop a stack of Vogues. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer