f Introduction

The seven articles and interview comprising this Special Issue explore the ways in which social readings of fashion and fabric can undermine or empower erstwhile marginalized narratives: four describe women’s roles in fashion history and four discuss material and/or national identity. The succeeding individual book reviews continue this conversation and, read critically, demonstrate how reviews add an additional layer of third-party contextualizing conversation. The juxtaposition of the two kinds of scholarly production as parallel and equal in this Special Issue is unusual but deliberate. It is an invitation to reconsider the ‘normative’ place of the review within the academy.