From "Ovid" to "Malcolm X", "The Ladies Magazine" to 'Punch", Mary Wollstone-craft to Anita Loos, William Hazlitt to D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Carlyle to Brett Easton Ellis, Fanny Burney to Jean Genet, Virginia Woolf to Milan Kundera, dress has stimulated comments at all levels - whether witty, ironic, moralistic, critical or simply sensual. Using letters, journals and memoirs, as well as novels, poetry and plays, and covering over four hundred years of writing, including British, Irish, American and European literature, "The Pimlico Companion to Fashion" is surely the ultimate collection about dress.

Author Biography

Colin McDowell is an internationally recognised fashion historian, a designer, commentator and critic. Among his many books on fashion are McDowell's Directory of Twentieth-Century Fashion; The Designer Scam; Dressed to Kill: Sex, Power and Clothes; Hats: Status and Glamour and Shoes: Fashion and Fantasy. He was written for numerous magazines and newspapers, including Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and Women's Journal and appears on radion and television. He has also written two successful novels set in the world of Italian fashion.