Fashion is often viewed through the lens of glamour, trends, and exclusivity—associated with runways, luxury brands, and the ever-shifting tides of the industry. Yet Fashion and Everyday Life offers a powerful reframing. Grounded in cultural theorist Michel de Certeau’s concept of “the everyday,” this book asks us to consider fashion not as something distant or elite, but as something lived—something worn, practiced, and experienced daily by people in ordinary settings.
Focusing on London and New York between 1890 and 2010, two of the most dynamic urban centers of modern fashion, the book explores how clothing operates within the rhythms of everyday life. From commuting to work, shopping, and dancing, to simply walking through the city, fashion is shown to be inseparable from daily habits and social routines. Within these ordinary moments, the author uncovers what she calls “the fashion system of the ordinary”—a framework that reveals how clothing plays a central role in shaping identity, memory, and self-presentation.
What makes this book distinct is its shift away from traditional fashion histories that emphasize designers, haute couture, or institutional power. Instead, it turns its focus to the streets, to the act of dressing and appearing in public, and to how people construct meaning through what they wear. Clothing is not only a marker of taste or status—it becomes a medium through which individuals navigate gender, class, race, and cultural belonging.
The author takes readers through themes such as “clothing the city,” street fashion, dressing up and down, performing multiple identities, and the significance of “going out” and being seen. Each chapter highlights how fashion is both routine and transformative—an expression of daily life and, at the same time, an extraordinary act of creativity.
This is also a book deeply concerned with space and place. It examines how fashion functions within specific urban environments—department stores, sidewalks, subways, dance halls—and how those environments, in turn, shape how fashion is experienced. Clothing becomes a kind of language, silently negotiating public visibility, private selfhood, and social interaction.
Fashion and Everyday Life is more than a history of what people wore. It is a cultural study that challenges us to see fashion not as a distant art form, but as something intimately tied to how we live, move, and make sense of the world. Every outfit, every morning routine, every glance in the mirror becomes part of a broader social narrative. In that way, this book not only deepens our understanding of fashion—it reveals how the everyday is, in fact, where fashion truly lives.