The clothes we wear tell stories about us—and are often imbued with cultural meanings specific to our ethnic heritage. This concise A-to-Z encyclopedia explores 150 different and distinct items of ethnic dress, their history, and their cultural significance within the United States.The clothing artifacts documented here have been or are now regularly worn by Americans as everyday clothing, fashion, ethnic or religious identifiers, or style statements. They embody the cultural histo...

All over the world, people get dressed, mostly for the same reasons. Why, then, do we look so different from each other? The answers lie in the constellations of factors that contribute to the human condition, from climate to conformity, gender expression to race and ethnicity.Beginning with the body as the organizing principle around which to study dress, this 50th anniversary edition of The Visible Self makes sense of humans as biological, social, and aesthetic creatures ...