FASHION. The Whole Story

The Whole Story offers a large-scale, chronologically structured survey of dress and fashion from antiquity to the present,

treating fashion as a field of visual culture shaped by social order, technological change, and global exchange. Rather than privileging a single canon, the volume moves across regions and empires, linking sartorial forms to political power, religious practice, and shifting concepts of the body and identity. Edited by Marnie Fogg and introduced by Valerie Steele, the book combines concise scholarly essays with extensive visual documentation, enabling comparative reading across periods, geographies, and media. Its scope—ranging from classical Mediterranean dress to court cultures in Asia, early American textile traditions, and the rise of haute couture and ready-to-wear—makes it a useful reference for teaching and research in fashion studies, design history, and material culture.