The course examines the history of Western fashion from the Middle Ages to the present day. Methodologies employed include those of art history, cultural and media studies, anthropology, history, and economic history. Theories of gender, sexuality and the politics of identity will be emphasised. The social and economic histories of making and consuming clothes and the relationship of dress to the body, and to urban and domestic space, which will provide a focus for the course. Topics to be studied include Elizabethan court dress, representation and politics, the 18th-century consumer revolution, the rise of the dictator-designer within modernism, and post-modern dressing.