Dress and Identity in America

Dress and Identity in America is an examination of the conservatism and materialism that swept across the country in the late 1940s through the 1950s-a backlash to the wartime tumult, privations, and social upheavals of the Second World War.

The study looks at how American men sought to recapture a masculine identity from a generation earlier, that of the stoic patriarch, breadwinner, and dutiful f...