In the history world, we keep seeing these popular history books that are all-encompassing of a “basic” item. The history of salt or beer or cinnamon, or what have you. However, I find that 2,000 years of history is still overwhelming, and that is coming from someone who is trained to study history. This book is the perfect answer to that problem and focuses on one of my favourite garments. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell’s Skirts is a fun and fascinating look at the skirt in the twentieth century, a staple in many of our closets. For Style File Friday, I’m sharing my thoughts…
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century, Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
While the story of women’s liberation has often been framed by the growing acceptance of pants over the twentieth century, the most important and influential female fashions of the era featured skirts. Suffragists and soldiers marched in skirts; the heroines of the Civil Rights Movement took a stand in skirts. Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe revolutionized modern art and Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes in skirts. When NASA put a man on the moon, “the computer wore a skirt,” in the words of one of those computers, mathematician Katherine G. Johnson. As women made strides towards equality in the vote, the workforce, and the world at large, their wardrobes evolved with them. They did not need to “wear the pants” to be powerful or progressive; the dress itself became modern as designers like Mariano Fortuny, Coco Chanel, Jean Patou, and Diane von Furstenberg redefined femininity for a new era.
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell’s Skirts looks at the history of twentieth-century womenswear through the lens of game-changing styles like the little black dress and the Bar Suit, as well as more obscure innovations like the Taxi dress or the Pop-Over dress, which came with a matching potholder. These influential garments illuminate the times in which they were first worn—and the women who wore them—while continuing to shape contemporary fashion and even opening the door for a genderfluid future of skirts. At once an authoritative work of history and a delightfully entertaining romp through decades of fashion, Skirts charts the changing fortunes, freedoms, and aspirations of women themselves.
Why You Should Read This…
As I said above, I am not the biggest fan of long, over-arching histories. Whether you are looking at fashion, food, or some other item, it is going to intersect with politics, religion, culture, and more. And to look at all of that over hundreds or thousands of years is exhausting. Chrisman-Campbell has wisely chosen to limit her book to the twentieth century, making it a mangeable but still very entertaining book.
She explains in the introduction that for much of history, “skirt” and “dress” were used interchangeably, meaning both are discussed here. And given that the twentieth century saw an exponential amount of growth and change in fashion, there is no better period to examine the skirt within.
I find Chrisman-Campbell to be an easy-to-read author, and Skirts is no exception. You do not need to have any background in fashion history to read and understand this book. (And if you have a general knowledge of famous Western people from the last century, you will understand her references immediately.) I always recognise that as an historian, I enjoy many bools that the casual reader would find labourious. However, Skirts does not fall not into that category- it was not written for academics!
Unsurprisingly, my favourite chapter was Chapter 6, “The Bar Suit”. My love of Dior is no secret, and I appreciated the in-depth discussion on the Bar Suit and the New Look in general. While there have been many major fashion moments in the last century and a quarter, the New Look is absolutely no. 1 for me.
Note: There were no images in the eARC that I received- the description specifically mentions images, but I cannot comment on those.
If you are not already following Chrisman-Campbell on Twitter, it is an absolute must! Her #OnThisDay fashion moments are the high points on my timeline!
Cheers,
The Historian
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