Best dressed

In this book the author has tried to avoid an 'academic' approach, but instead has tried to create an accessible history which relates fashion's changing nature to the broad development of Australian society as a whole. Not just the events of the past, but what we have seen on the street, on the beach, in newspaper headlines, trendy boutiques and favourite magazines have been covered, so as to establish underlying themes from what has formerly been just a proliferation of disparate trends and images. Although the Colonial and Victorian periods are included, the book's main domain lies in the twentieth century. It looks not only at those fashions which have been created in Australia or imported from abroad, but also at the marvellous style-setters who wore them as well as the effects they created.