The New Dress Detective

A Practical Guide to Object-based Research in Fashion, revised

Ingrid E. Mida

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350517332
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

The New Dress Detective updates and expands this highly regarded practical guide to analysing fashion objects.

Featuring seven completely new case studies – including an 18th-century gown, a man's 19th-century tailored jacket and pantaloons, a 19th-century boy's frock, a woman's Edo period uchikake, a 1927 homemade wedding dress, a Dior dress ensemble, and a mass-manufactured uniform of the 1970s – this invaluable guide has been revised throughout, to enhance its usefulness for readers and to reflect the state of the field.

The New Dress Detective offers tools to unravel the hidden stories in garments with a carefully developed research methodology specific to dress, with easy-to-use checklists to guide the reader through the process.

Beautifully illustrated, the varied case studies of fashionable western and non-western garments articulate the methodological framework for the process, illustrate the use of the checklists, and show how evidence from the garment itself can be used to corroborate theories of dress or to engage in alternative modes of interpretation such as making, wearing or other creative outputs.

Written in plain language, this book provides a structured approach to conducting object-based research in fashion for anyone interested in fashion including students and practitioners of fashion or museum studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Tilte
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedicated
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• An Introduction to Object-based Researchin Fashion
• 1 HOW TO READAN OBJECT OF DRESS
• 2 OBSERVATION
• 3 REFLECTION
• 4 INTERPRETATION
• 5 THE BIOGRAPHYOF AN OBJECTAn Eighteenth-Century Spitalfields Silk Gown
• 6 FASHION &THE DANDYA Man’s Tailcoatand Pantaloons,circa 1820s
• 7 FASHION &GENDERA Boy’s Cashmere Frock, circa 1855
• 8 CREATIVE PRACTICEA 1927 Wedding Dress
• 9 FASHION & GLAMOURA Dress Ensemblefrom Christian Dior Paris, Fall/Winter 1958–59
• 10 FASHION & IDENTITYA 1976 CN Tower Uniform
• 11 THE LANGUAGEOF THE KIMONO An Edo-period Kimono (Uchikake)
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Index