Book review: Dressing the Resistance

 

I had the good fortune to hear Camille Benda lead a session at the recent ATCA conference, and attendees received a special discount code for her incredible new book, Dressing the Resistance: The Visual Language of Protest Through History.

The book is exceptionally wide-ranging, from discussing dissident fashion in 1970s punk to revolutionary France and beyond. Many of the books Benda uses as references by fashion scholars like Aileen Ribiero, Dick Hebdige, and Valerie Steele were seminal favorites I read back when I first began exploring an interest in analyzing and decoding the language of fashion. 

Of particular interest were the sections on the significances of various colors in resistance movements in global cultures/contexts and the deployment of sartorical conformity as a tool in protest movements. Sections on the interaction between craft and protest garments--knitting, crochet, and millinery--are also fascinating, fun, and inspiring.

This beautifully-designed magazine-sized hardback book would make a great display volume on a coffee table as well as an excellent addition to a research library collection.