Prose
The wakashu, traditionally played by teenage boys, represented a specific subculture within Edo Japan. Wakashu are described by kabuki scholar...
Trousers & The Most Precious Ornament
A man in his own clothes is as much sexless as possible. He shaves his face so that, if he...
Covering Women on the Beach
When the burkini appeared in the news a decade ago, it carried with it a dense web of historical associations,...
Dressing like a Gypsy
The Gypsy costume that won me prizes in school carnivals in the late 1970s and early 1980s had little to...
Alice ’71 in Wonderland
Two years after the Paris 1968 student riots, Parisian couturier Jacques Esterel launched a timely couture collection for men and...
Cult Status
In March 1997 thirty-nine people were found dead in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California, an upscale suburb of...
The Face of Death
In his 1946 Theses Against Occultism, Adorno addressed the swiftness with which occultism, when translated onto the political stage, could...
WARDROBE MALFUNCTIONS
Linda, Austin, TX I was dressed in a gorgeous short leather-suede skirt and top having a birthday dinner at the...
THE SELF ON DISPLAY
Vivienne Westwood's ability to provoke public discussion – both through her fashion and her media appearances – has characterised her...
‘A society of ugly people is an immoral society’
In 1920, a group of youth leaders walked out of the Boy Scout movement in Britain, disillusioned with the increasing...
The Self On Display
Yohji Yamamoto’s autobiography, 'My Dear Bomb' (2010) creates a complex conceptual persona of a designer, that of the ‘insider/outsider.’ A...
Late to Bloom
‘To create a being out of oneself is very serious,’ wrote the late Clarice Lispector in her 1973 work, Água...