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Not Just for Fashionistas: The Berg Fashion Library

By Jutta Seibert

Fashion touches our lives in ways small and large. It is an outlet for creative expression and an instrument of compliance. Fashion and design shape the mundane and elevate the holy and extraordinary. Just think about the conspicuous vestments worn to celebrate mass or the extraordinary garments we choose to celebrate special milestones in our lives.

The Berg Fashion Library (BFL) is a testament to fashion’s ubiquitous influence. The collection features a wide range of multidisciplinary monographs and essays that touch on all aspects of dress and fashion worldwide. Titles that discuss the constraints of fashion include Craik’s Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to Transgression (Berg, 2005) and Tynan and Godson’s Uniform: Clothing and Discipline in the Modern World (Bloomsbury, 2019). Hume’s The Religious Life of Dress: Global Fashion and Faith (Bloomsbury, 2013) explores the role of religious apparel. In Wedding Dress Across Cultures (Berg, 2013) Foster and Johnson present a rich collection of essays on the role of wedding garments worldwide. Recently added titles include Turney’s Fashion Crimes: Dressing for Deviance (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Turner’s The Sport Shoe: A History from Field to Fashion (Bloomsbury, 2019)


The Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion is one of the cornerstones of the collection together with the second edition of Classic and Modern Writings on Fashion, a collection of seminal writings on fashion including influential thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Fernand Braudel, Johan Huizinga, Georg Simmel, and Thorstein Veblen. A selection of carefully chosen images from museums and exhibits round out the collection together with lesson plans and bibliographic guides.

Remote access is provided through the Library’s Databases A-Z list under B.


Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

 

 



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Trial access to Bloomsbury Fashion Central

By Jutta Seibert

Bloomsbury Fashion Central (BFC) is a platform that features a range of interdisciplinary research resources on dress and textile culture. Available through BFC are the Berg Fashion Library, the Fairchild Books Library, Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases, and archives of fashion photography and video. Campus-wide access to BFC is available on trial basis until Oct. 23 through the Databases A-Z list on the Library’s website.

While BFC was clearly created with fashion professionals in mind, books in the Berg Fashion Library have a broad multi-disciplinary appeal and cover all aspects of dress and fashion worldwide. The Library’s collection already includes a small selection of print books from the Berg Fashion Library among them the Berg Companion to Fashion and The Dictionary of Fashion History.

Another noteworthy title in this award-winning library is a new edition of Peter McNeil’s collection of essays on fashion by a wide swath of critical thinkers among them Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Fernand Braudel, Johan Huizinga, Georg Simmel, and Thorstein Veblen. Originally published as Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources, the new edition is called Classic and Modern Writings on Fashion. Michelle Maskiell’s “Consuming Kashmir: Shawls and Empires, 1500–2000” is one of the essays in this collection that reveals the intricate connections between fashion and daily life, politics, and economics. Also included is the multi-volume Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion which explores all aspects of dress and fashion on a global level.

Take a closer look at some of the works featured in this collection and let us know what you think. Here are a few titles to get you started:

BFC also includes lesson plans and bibliographic subject guides on a range of topics such as fashion and art, the social psychology of dress, and fashion and gender contributed by subject experts. Each object has its own doi to facilitate content sharing and integration in the online classroom. Contact us if you have questions.


Jutta Seibert is Director of Research Services & Scholarly Engagement at Falvey Memorial Library.

 

 



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Last Modified: October 6, 2020

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