Establishing Dress History

Lou Taylor argues that only when women were permitted to be curators of dress within museum did the collection of all kinds of dress find its proper place in our museums of decorative arts, social history and ethnography. Chapters cover debates related to dress collecting in such institutions, including discussion of the return of sacred objects, the place of contemporary fashion within museums and issues of the commodification of collections and displays. This book is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students on design, decorative arts, fashion and dress history courses, as well as those on museum studies and gender studies courses.