Representations of fashionable femininity have multiplied throughout the 20th century, with complex versions of feminine identity being found in fashion store advertising, magazines, photography, and museum collections. This book examines the relationship between women's fashion, female representation and femininity in Britain throughout the 1900s. The authors unpick the dynamics of the fashion system and set fashion into the context of British social life, using the oral history accounts of women of all classes to highlight the meanings of particular fashions.

Cheryl Buckley is Reader in Design History and Hilary Fawcett is Senior Lecturer in Design History, both in the Department of Historical and Critical Studies, University of Northumbria.