Fashioning London Clothing and the Modern Metropolis

Over the past three centuries, London has established itself as one of the world's most inventive fashion capitals. City life and fashion have always been intertwined, but nowhere has this relationship been more excitingly expressed than on the streets of London. Fashioning London looks at the manner in which particular styles of dress became associated with this leading international city, ultimately challenging the dominance of Paris, Milan and New York. From the pleasure gardens and coffee houses of the eighteenth century, through Victorian extremes of poverty and conspicuous pleasure-driven consumption, to the explosions of subcultural taste that define the capital today, Londoners have constantly offered an idiosyncratic reading of fashionability that has profoundly influenced the nature of style elsewhere. Drawing on a range of sources, including paintings, street photography, maps, tourist guides, literature, stage, and press representations, Fashioning London paints a vivid and definitive portrait of London's iconoclastic style.

Christopher Breward is Professor in Historical and Cultural Studies, London College of Fashion, and the author of numerous books, including The Culture of Fashion, The Hidden Consumer, and Fashion.