Such a well written book. The author takes us through the years/centuries of skirt/dress wearing by women and men. She crafts the history in a wonderful style telling us about who wore what/when etc. it was especially interesting and fun for me to read about the designers whose names and clothing are familiar to me. And to read who wore them, the critics response to new looks as well as the public responses to new styles. All in all I found it to be worthwhile and a delightful, interesting book.

Fascinating look at the history of women’s clothing especially the skirt over the years.
The evolution and style that changed and transformed generations. Pants were mostly seen as a masculine clothes. It was an actual crime to wear pants in some places.
Hollywood actresses made news with fashion choices.

Discusses 10 different types of skirts, many of which I hadn’t known had a name. My copy did not contain pictures but had me looking them up out of curiosity. This book has added a new perspective in wearing dresses which I normally relate to getting “dressed up”. The author was effective in describing the evolution of women’s choice of clothing. The choice for some women to wear pants spoke to a feminist movement at one time as well as practical. She also addresses men who choose to wear skirts or kilts.

“It’s too early to say definitively whether this creative and individualistic blending of masculine and feminine garments, accessories, and cosmetics is a passing fad or a new “standard,” either in fashion or in gender expression.”

I was shocked with learning blatant expectations to donn skirts was in full swing until recently. Seems women were always fighting over what to wear - pants, dresses/skirts. A huge salute to the women paving the way for women today to wear and have the freedom of fashion we enjoy presently.

Campbell provides exhaustive research and interesting history regarding dresses/skirts. Presented in a captivating manner. This book was truly an eye-opener, I have a new respect for the history, designers, and insightful information on dresses/skirts.

I love wearing dresses/skirts, however, I do appreciate pants when the occasion calls for it. I certainly will think twice when I step into a dress/skirt after reading this informative publication by Campbell.

I enjoyed reading this book. This is a new author for me which I enjoyed the author's look into the history of fashion. I found this book to be a well written, fast paced book that brought some inspiration to women and fashion. This is an interesting look at fashion and the history of women over the years. It is an engaging and easy to read book. I think that it brings inspiration and inspires women and fashion. I enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it.

This was an interesting book about women's fashion as well as the state of women's lives in different eras. I liked the structure that focused on a different skirt/dress in a specific time period, even if I didn't always agree with Chrisman-Campbell's takes. Reading new information about well-known women as well as learning about new influencers from long ago, was a delight. As I went to post my review earlier, I was struck by how many people dinged the ARC book for not having illustrations when it was clearly stated that there were none in the review copies. Having now had a chance to compare the ARC to a finished copy, the illustrations do indeed draw you more into the material and better engage the reader. I have already recommended this book to patrons and will continue to do so. Thank you to St Martin's Press and NetGalley for the early copy for my honest opinion. 3.5 stars

As I said above, I am not the biggest fan of long, over-arching histories. Whether you are looking at fashion, food, or some other item, it is going to intersect with politics, religion, culture, and more. And to look at all of that over hundreds or thousands of years is exhausting. Chrisman-Campbell has wisely chosen to limit her book to the twentieth century, making it a mangeable but still very entertaining book.

She explains in the introduction that for much of history, “skirt” and “dress” were used interchangeably, meaning both are discussed here. And given that the twentieth century saw an exponential amount of growth and change in fashion, there is no better period to examine the skirt within.

I find Chrisman-Campbell to be an easy-to-read author, and Skirts is no exception. You do not need to have any background in fashion history to read and understand this book. (And if you have a general knowledge of famous Western people from the last century, you will understand her references immediately.) I always recognise that as an historian, I enjoy many bools that the casual reader would find labourious. However, Skirts does not fall not into that category- it was not written for academics!

Unsurprisingly, my favourite chapter was Chapter 6, “The Bar Suit”. My love of Dior is no secret, and I appreciated the in-depth discussion on the Bar Suit and the New Look in general. While there have been many major fashion moments in the last century and a quarter, the New Look is absolutely no. 1 for me.

as a reader who is not really deeply versed in fashion history, this was a very interesting read. Though I have to agree with some reviews of the book, regarding the interchangeability between the terms skirt and dress and societal expectations on different eras, it was still a solid read.

A highlight of my non-fiction and fashion history reading this year. Delighted to include this title in “The Year in Reading,” my December year-end wrap up for the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see feature at link)

While many proclaim the growing acceptance of pants over the twentieth century as an important step for women, skirts have played a vital role. From the start of the 1900s to the present day, fashion has changed, shifting back and forth between trends.

I didn't pick up this book because I was interested in feminism or how fashion evolved with the movement. I was intrigued by the history of clothing. There can be no denying that dresses and skirts have changed a great deal in the last century. This book shared the history of ten of the most influential items of clothing.
It was particularly fascinating for me to see the cycle fashion seems to have. What is popular one decade or year, quickly becomes set aside for another. Only to become popular once again. As a lover of skirts, the 9th chapter was my favorite.

At the same time, this was not an easy read. I found myself taking breaks in-between sections. The details show just how much research the author put into the subject.

I would recommend this to readers who have an interest in twentieth century fashion. And readers who enjoy feminist topics will no doubt enjoy the perspective as well.

Each chapter in this book covers the history of an iconic type of dress-tennis dresses, the little black dress, miniskirts, etc. Descriptions were detailed and the writing was clear. However, I was reading the ARC and the descriptions were so good that I really wanted to SEE things. I assume this is not the case in the published book, and I think seeing the skirts would be quite enjoyable.

My favorite chapter was about the tennis dress and how sports clothing evolved. There was a lot of talk about perfect figures because of course the fashion industry is a large part of this history.

All in all I learned things and and enjoyed the book!

Thoroughly researched and perfectly attainable, this history of womens fashion puts that fabric below the waist under the microscope. Giving us insight into social movements and fashion battles, Chrisman-Campbell creates a hemline through history and takes us on an entertaining journey past the simple fabric and into depths of female expression. Sometimes the women (and men) in skirts are dictated to, but sometimes, in the best ways, they dictate the importance of how much leg they show, how much space they take up, and how they get to be seen.

This is a fashion and history lesson. (Sometimes there’s way too much information though.)

I wish there were photos alongside the text. I’ve been looking up a lot of designers and wow! Some of their pieces are amazing.

The author shows how clothes were used to keep women “in line.” Her approach, however, is light. She lets the reader come to her own conclusions (rather than writing, “Isn’t this awful?”)

I don’t know what I was expecting when I requested a book called “Skirts” but it didn’t take very long to realize I most assuredly did not want to read a book about clothes.
I usually try to push through and read complete galleys, even if I’m not loving them, but I’m just way too behind.
I didn’t read enough of this to give it a fair rating.
Thanks to #netgalley and #stmartinspress for this #arc of #skirts in exchange for an honest review.

I had hoped this book would be a more nuanced look at fashion and its role in the socio-politico landscape. Instead it was a half-heartedly researched book that was way too Western and European centered and was a thinly-veiled cover of the author’s own body image issues. This was not the book I was hoping to read.

The history of skirts - some of it was definitely interesting but I wish there were pictures. I think there might be in the hard copy. I spent a while googling things that were referenced in the book. It was a reasonably quick read and there was some history that I wasn't aware of about how fashion was influenced by what was happening in society. Overall an interesting, decent book but not great.

I really enjoyed and appreciated Skirts! An interesting, engaging history of fashion via gender roles, power plays, social expression and style. Was very insightful and clever. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher. All opinions are my own.

Much more interesting than I expected. The cultural, historical, fashion evolution of the skirt! So different than anything I am more commonly reading. I highly recommend it!

Skirts is a shockingly regressive pop history book that lazily argues for the inherent superiority of Western European culture.

I put off writing this review because my early impressions were so negative that I knew any review would just sound like a rant. But the longer I've thought about this book, the worse I've realized it is. This isn't an otherwise-fine book with some old-fashioned biases poking through. This is a book explicitly making the case for European cultural superiority and gender essentialism.

I think I was lured in by the subtitle. "Fashioning feminity" suggests that the author is going to examine feminity as a constructed cultural project and look at the role of the skirt in that project.

I was giving this book way, way too much credit. There is zero engagement with the actual concerns of social and material history here. This is essentially a coffee-table book of famous 20th-century dressed glued together with wild, unsourced, sweeping statements about social history.

A quick tour of the opening chapters of this book reads like a greatest-hits list of all the biggest problems in the field of fashion history. Let's take a look:

The unspoken "Western"

This book is exclusively concerned with American and Western European fashion. There’s no issue with making Europe your chosen scope of research, but that's not the case here. Like many dress historians, the author is not only disinterested in non-Western history, but feels that Western history is synonymous with *all* history. The title, subtitle, and description do not make any mention that the work is limited in scope to the US and Western Europe; apparently, it goes without saying that there's nothing else worth talking about.

The introduction offers one of the only mentions that non-Western people exist in the whole book: "In Eastern History, the story of skirts--and pants--as expressions of gender identity is more nuanced. By the twentieth century, however, the dictates of Paris couturiers were understood and heeded around the world"

I mean… yikes. Two issues. One-- this is not fully true. Two--To the extent that what she's describing *did* happen... what a jaw-dropping way to describe the cultural effects of global imperialism.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the book supports and agrees with the colonialist outlook that the suppression of non-Western modes of dress in the twentieth century reflects positive progress and modernization. People outside Western Europe apparently spontaneously abandoned their individual cultures, and they were right to do so. The subsequent chapters back this up. To this author, the pinnacle of taste and beauty is a slick French sensibility rooted in ancient Greek silhouettes. It isn't simply what the author prefers, it is better. Superior. No evidence is needed; the superiority of European habits is self-evident by their popularity.


Always/Never

Here’s a good tip for reading pop history: Search the book for the words “always” and “never.” Even in a simplified description of history (especially when simplified, actually!) authors should be making sweeping statements like that with extreme rarity.

Every single chapter of this book contains at least one out-of-pocket claim of a universal truth of history. Here’s one, again from the first chapter:

“...the primal appeal of enormous skirts, which emphasized (or at least gave the illusion of) a narrow waist and wide hips, telegraph both virginity and fertility, two qualities that have historically been universally valued in women."

Universally? UNIVERSALLY? If that’s your claim, I would expect an entire book on the history of the world backing it up. And then I would expect that book to be torn to shreds by scholars.


Why do we need to hear about your body-image issues

"Over time, my starving student figure settled into a curvier silhouette, and skirts were undeniably more flattering than the low-rise and "skinny" trouser styles then in fashion. At some point, I realized that I need never again worry about how my butt looked in pants

"I wholeheartedly agree with Vogue's 1964 stance that pants are a great thing "on the proper figure" and "on the proper occasion." If I had a different body or lifestyle, I'd wear them more often."

I'm not criticizing the author for having body-image issues. It is clear that society's standards did a number on her and I'm not blaming her for internalizing the fear of fatness that she grew up around. But I didn't sign up to read her memoir, and having her fear and hatred of fat sprung on me in the middle of a paragraph about fashion history is uncalled for. More importantly, she presents her subjective experience as somehow factual. Skirts were "undeniably flattering." In pants, she would "need" to worry about how her butt looked. Not everyone has the "proper figure" for pants. There's no hint anywhere that she is thinking critically about her feelings about her own body or other's bodies. And when you say something like "I wholeheartedly agree with Vogue's 1964 stance," you need to bring your grown-up thinking to the table.


Also it is Bad

The book more than earned one star by being shoddy history work that seeks to promote colonialist and racist ideas of superior European taste and beauty. But as a bonus, it is also Just Bad. The writing is not good. The paragraphs leap around in time and topic with no apparent direction. The topics chosen are poorly curated and boringly presented. The pictures (which were not present in the ARC!) add little. You’d be better off pulling up the Wikipedia page for each of the famous dresses listed in the table of contents.

<i>Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the advance reader's copy of this title via Netgalley. The quotes used in this review were pulled from a finished copy of the ebook. No money changed hands for this review and all opinions are my own.</i>

This well researched and written book would make a perfect gift for someone who has an interest in the evolution of women’s clothing, the dress and skirt. Seeing clothing over the last 150 years through the eye of history is fascinating. It is filled with information technical and general with many "aha" moments. Perfect for that niche reader!

I listened to the audio version of this book. Pretty interesting info, even for someone like me who is not super into fashion. Lots of references to big names from the fashion world.