Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

A New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022 * An Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of 2022 * A Town & Country Must-Read Book of 2022 * A Fashionista Summer Read

Smart, funny, and impressively thorough.The Cut

In the spirit of works by Jia Tolentino and Anne Helen Peterson, a smart and incisive essay collection centered on the fashion industryits history, its importance, why we wear what we wear, and why it mattersfrom Elle Magazines fashion features director.

Why does fashion hold so much power over us? Most of us care about how we dress and how we present ourselves. Style offers clues about everything from class to which in-group we belong to. Bad Feminist for fashion, Dress Code takes aim at the institutions within the fashion industry while reminding us of the importance of dress and what it means for self-presentation. Everythingfrom societal changes to the progress (or lack thereof) of womens rights to the hidden motivations behind what we choose to wear to align ourselves with a particular social groupcan be tracked through clothing. 

Veronique Hyland examines thought-provoking questions such as: Why has the French girl persisted as our most undying archetype? What does dressing for yourself really mean for a woman? How should a female politician dress? Will gender-differentiated fashion go forever out of style? How has social media affected and warped our sense of self-presentation, and how are we styling ourselves expressly for it?

Not everyone participates in painting, literature, or film. But there is no opting out of fashion. And yet, fashion is still seen as superficial and trivial, and only the finest of couture is considered as art. Hyland argues that fashion is a key that unlocks questions of power, sexuality, and class, taps into history, and sends signals to the world around us. Clothes means somethingeven if youre just wearing jeans and a T-shirt.