Untitled (Strike), Dox Thrash, c.1940. Courtesy PAFA.

More work would do a lot to recalibrate fashion’s history; making it more inclusive and representative, but also to help reframe work clothes beyond social history to bring attention to the qualities of the designs themselves.

Keywords: Characters in Everyday Life, Dust-bowl Alabama, Leftist populism, Modernist aesthetics, Nostalgia

Interview

Becoming A Lady In the World

On Three Generations of Quinceañera Dresses

April 10, 2024

By Clarissa M. Esguerra

The "damas" (maids of honor) go from the church to the reception in a Ford Explorer limousine at Ruby's "quinceañera," Huntington Park, California, 2001, Lauren Greenfield, Courtesy of Milwaukee Art Museum

The young quinceañera is seemingly always in a ball gown. She is in pink, green, blue or other pastel colour,...

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Prose

Expecting

April 3, 2024

By Mary Wang

Scott Hyde, Fruit, 1967. Courtesy MoMA.

It’s been a year since my first miscarriage, and the summer sales have returned. I buy a loose kaftan, I...

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Fiction

I Stand Here Ironing

March 25, 2024

By Tillie Olsen

She was a beautiful baby. The first and only one of our five that was beautiful at birth. You do...

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Prose

Blue Polyester Hug

March 8, 2024

By Monica Jae Yeon Moon

Image courtesy Ohlman Consorti, Vestoj On Everyday Life

Giving my grandfather a hug, even as an adult, was something I did almost every time we visited him for...

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Prose

Beggars And Choosers

On Dressing While Homeless

February 14, 2024

By Johannes Lenhard

Photographs by Camilo José Vergara

Carlo is concerned about his looks; it’s important to him how his ‘outer shell’ – his coat – appears. Decent...

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Prose

What Fashion Is Not (Only)

February 1, 2024

By Renate Stauss

Fashion is often characterised as a representation of society, its ‘most precise reflection.’ Yet, specular reflections are optical illusions based...

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