I preface The History of Fashion and Dress with this statement, because I don’t actually see this course as just a history of different bits of clothing worn in different time periods, but rather as a "History of Western Civilization" course as taught by a female, white, middle class, middle aged costume designer, who thinks that what is important isn’t what people wore, but why they wore it. And who thinks that the history of fashion and dress is the history of everyone. Where the history of politics primarily concerns the power struggles of the upper classes, and the history of war, the power struggles of men, fashion history is about struggles between rich and poor, men and women, East and West, and indigenous populations and colonists.
Clothing for me is a beautiful visual demonstration of the social and emotional needs of it’s wearers, and as such, shows in a clearly understood visual way what people of differing times and cultures wanted socially. Western Fashion is a good beginning, in that it has gone through so many rapid changes and bizarre extremes that it has examples of nearly every kind of clothing function. So I will teach a brief over view of my "history" of Western Civilization, as seen by a female, white, middle class, middle aged costume designer, through The History of Fashion and Dress. Naturally, this being the case, it will illuminate what I think is important in history: aesthetics, the position of women, technological innovations in garment manufacture, sex fetishism, personal self expression, social and political revolutions, and of course, clothes
