Is your style • crisp and put-together? • a creative mix of solid colors and lively patterns? • equally suited to the classroom and the beach? Then you're a follower of the preppy look! It's the go-to look for countless celebrities, from Taylor Swift to Zac Efron. With a few style staples in your closet and an eye for patterns and colors, you can pull together looks that are just as classy and creative. Find out about the clothes, accessories, and hairstyles that make up preppy fashion—and discover how you can put your own spin on this timeless style!

"This is the thinking girl's guide to style, with juicy tidbits of fashion history, pics of trendy celebrities and the styles they embrace, fun style quizzes, and creative ways to personalize any look."

In this two-volume set, a series of expert contributors look at what it means to be a boy growing up in North America, with entries covering everything from toys and games, friends and family, and psychological and social development. Boy Culture: An Encyclopedia spans the breadth of the country and the full scope of a pivotal growing-up time to show what "a boy's life" is really like today. With hundreds of entries across two volumes, it offers a series of vivid snapshots of boys of all kinds and ages at home, school, and at play; interacting with family or knocking around with friends, or pursuing interests alone as they begin their journey to adulthood. Boy Culture shows an uncanny understanding of just how exciting, confusing, and difficult the years between childhood and young adulthood can be. The toys, games, clothes, music, sports, and feelings—they are all a part of this remarkable resource. But most important is the book's focus on the things that shape boyhood identities—the rituals of masculinity among friends, the enduring conflict between fitting in and standing out, the effects of pop culture images, and the influence of role models from parents and teachers to athletes and entertainers to fictional characters.

This unique four-volume encyclopedia examines the historical significance of fashion trends, revealing the social and cultural connections of clothing from the precolonial times to the present day. This sweeping overview of fashion and apparel covers several centuries of American history as seen through the lens of the clothes we wear—from the Native American moccasin to Manolo Blahnik's contribution to stiletto heels. Through four detailed volumes, this work delves into what people wore in various periods in our country's past and why—from hand-crafted family garments in the 1600s, to the rough clothing of slaves, to the sophisticated textile designs of the 21st century. More than 100 fashion experts and clothing historians pay tribute to the most notable garments, accessories, and people comprising design and fashion. The four volumes contain more than 800 alphabetical entries, with each volume representing a different era. Content includes fascinating information such as that beginning in 1619 through 1654, every man in Virginia was required to plant a number of mulberry trees to support the silk industry in England; what is known about the clothing of enslaved African Americans; and that there were regulations placed on clothing design during World War II. The set also includes color inserts that better communicate the visual impact of clothing and fashion across eras.

From Rococo to Edwardian fashions, Japanese street style has reinvented many western dress styles, reinterpreting and altering their meanings and messages in a different cultural and historical context. This wide ranging and original study reveals the complex exchange of styles and what they represent in Japan and beyond, contesting common perceptions of gender in Japanese dress and the notion that non-western fashions simply imitate western styles. Through case studies focussing on fashion image consumption in style tribes such as Kamikaze Girls, Lolita, Edwardian, Ivy Style, Victorian, Romantic and Kawaii, this ground-breaking book investigates the complexities of dress and gender and demonstrates the flexible nature of contemporary fashion and style exchange in a global context. Japanese Fashion Cultures will appeal to students and scholars of fashion, cultural studies, gender studies, media studies and related fields.

"Read about the history of fashion, current fashion trends, and dress codes"--Provided by publisher

Is your style--- low-key and flexible?- a creative spin on everyday clothing?- all about being comfortable, even at its most eye-catching?Then you're ready to rock the streetwear look! Long before streetwear became popular with stars like Gwen Stefani and Jay-Z, it was sported by ordinary kids with a keen sense of style. Cool yet casual, this trend is all about putting a flashy twist on the most basic items in your closet. Find out about the clothes, accessories, and hairstyles that define streetwear--and discover how you can use them to create your own unique look!

"A cinematic narrative of glamour, grit, luxury, and luck, Fashion Killa draws on exclusive interviews with the leaders of the fashion world to tell the story of the hip-hop artists, designers, stylists, and unsung heroes who fought the power and reinvented style around the world over the last fifty years. Set in the sartorial scenes of New York, Paris, and Milan, journalist Sowmya Krishnamurthy's reporting on the intersecting histories of hip-hop and contemporary fashion focuses on the risk takers and rebels-the artists, designers, stylists, models, and tastemakers-who challenged a systemic power structure and historically reinvented the world of haute couture. Fashion Killa is a classic tale of a modern renaissance; of an exclusionary industry gate-crashed by innovators; of impresarios-Sean "Diddy" Combs, Dapper Dan, Virgil Abloh-hoisting hip-hop from the streets to the stratosphere; of supernovas-Lil' Kim, Cardi B, and Megan Thee Stallion-allying with kingmakers-Anna Wintour, Donatella Versace, and Ralph Lauren; of traditionalist fashion houses-Louis Vuitton, Fendi, and Saint Laurent-transformed into temples of rap gods like Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, and Travis Scott. Krishnamurthy explores the connections between the DIY hip-hop scene and the exclusive upper-echelons of high fashion. She tracks the influence of music and streetwear on the most exclusive (and exclusionary) luxury brands. At the intersection of cultural commentary and oral history, Fashion Killa commemorates the contributions of hip-hop to music, fashion, and our culture at large"--

Fashion is both big business and big news. From models’ eating disorders and sweated labour to the glamour of a new season's trends, statements and arguments about fashion and the fashion industry can be found in every newspaper, consumer website and fashion blog. Books which define, analyse and explain the nature, production and consumption of fashion in terms of one theory or another abound. But what are the theories that run through all of these analyses, and how can they help us to understand fashion and clothing? Fashion Theory: an introduction explains some of the most influential and important theories on fashion: it brings to light the presuppositions involved in the things we think and say about fashion every day and shows how they depend on those theories. This clear, accessible introduction contextualises and critiques the ways in which a wide range of disciplines have used different theoretical approaches to explain – and sometimes to explain away – the astonishing variety, complexity and beauty of fashion. Through engaging examples and case studies, this book explores: fashion and clothing in history fashion and clothing as communication fashion as identity fashion, clothing and the body production and consumption fashion, globalization and colonialism fashion, fetish and the erotic. This book will be an invaluable resource for students of cultural studies, sociology, gender studies, fashion design, textiles or the advertising, marketing and manufacturing of clothes.

It goes without saying that identity has long been a recurrent topic in studies of American culture. The struggle between group sameness and individual uniqueness is a common issue in understanding diversity in the United States on several levels—including how our differences have not always resulted in national celebration. Terms such as “hybridity,” “performativity,” “transnationalism,” and “border zones” are part of the current theoretical vocabulary and, for some, deploy a fresh language of possibility, one promising to undermine the conformist values of monocultural perspectives. To that end, Culturcide and Non-Identity across American Culture explores theories and practices of identity from a broad perspective to grasp how varied, diffuse, and distorted they can be, especially when that identity seems boringly familiar. The subjects range from hip-hop parodies to punk preppies to pachuco-ska, thus crossing the lines of genre, medium, and discipline to blur the borderline dividing the kinds of texts to which these theories can “legitimately” be applied.