1st Edition
Getting Dressed Conformity and Imitation in Clothing and Everyday Life
Getting Dressed teaches sociology through the everyday decision of what to wear. It is about the rules that shape how we dress and how and why we conform. It is about how and why we imitate others. We may think about clothing as our personal style and identity. But our personal style is not so personal; it is social, shaped and limited by countless social influences. We use clothes to rank and treat each other as better and worse. Yet we need each other to become who we are when getting dressed. This book is about what we wear, why we wear it, and why it matters.
- The public nature of personal style
- The written dress codes
- The unwritten dress codes
- How much to cover?
- Who covers what when?
- How much to care?
- When to challenge the rules?
- How to show status?
- Inequality and shopping for clothes
- Following and fitting in
- The influencers
- In the industry
- Is individuality individual?
- Individuality in lifestyles?
- Mashup
Dressing by the rules
Dressing like others do
Biography
Carrie Yodanis is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. She is also author of Getting Married: The Public Nature of Our Private Relationships.
Getting Dressed is a truly unique book in the blooming field of fashion sociology. Using a rich array of concrete examples, Yodanis asks a simple, yet overlooked question: why do we wear what we wear? Anyone interested in fashion will enjoy her sociologically-minded answers. —Frederic Godart, Assistant Professor, Organisational Behaviour Department, INSEADCarrie Yodanis makes a meaningful contribution to a sociology of fashion/dress and argues convincingly that getting dressed, which appears to be a personal experience, is in fact socially controlled and influenced by a variety of external factors. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the sociological analysis of the way people dress. —Yuniya Kawamura, Professor, Sociology, Fashion Institute of Technology
