"Dress serves as an intimate portal into the biographies of famed figures, children, and everyday wearers. Drawn from a range of perspectives, Dress as Biography welcomes us through that portal to consider the personal, sensual, and material in the lives of historic figures, calling attention to the intimate and profoundly individual experiences we have with and through our clothing." -- Annette Becker, University of North Texas, USA " Dress as Biography offers fresh perspectives on self-fashioning, from the famous to the forgotten. Throughout, authors debate how dress might define or disguise who we really are. Garments may offer alternative versions of the self to those provided elsewhere or, at times, the only traces. A unique, fascinating, original and moving collection. Highly recommended." -- Annebella Pollen, University of Brighton, UK "This enjoyable collection of essays not only enriches the study of dress but illustrates how an individual's clothing - recorded or still extant - can chronicle a life, a moment in time, or even sometimes mislead.

The superb armour of the 16th Earl of Leicester, for example, suggests a glorious military career, which was largely inexact. But Winston Churchill's mended and much-expanded red waistcoat, while rightly suggesting wartime austerity, adds an appealingly vulnerable touch to military glory, humanizing rather than detracting from it." -- Clair Hughes, author of Hats and Dressed in Fiction.