Bargains! PROMOTIONS

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Canadian Fashion Economies

A Select History of Fashion Culture, Commerce, and Colonization

Mark Joseph O'Connell (Seneca College, Toronto, Canada)

$170

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Bloomsbury Visual Arts
30 October 2025
A vital re-examination of Canadian cultural and commercial history told through key fashion objects from First Nations, colonial settlers, and contemporary Canadian culture.

Traditional narratives of fashion tend to ignore sophisticated pre-colonial networks, First Nation innovations and techniques, and their contributions to colonial dress. From exquisite Chilkat weavings to the iconic Hudson’s Bay Company blanket coat, by way of ribbon skirts, quilts, and a beaver-fur top hat, this rich study uses Canadian fashion objects as a research tool to illuminate neglected areas in North American fashion history.

Using vivid object-based research, O’Connell maps out pre-colonial economic networks spanning the entire continent, global colonial textile and fur trades, and the material culture of French and English migrant populations in the ‘New World’, and equips readers with a framework for more nuanced and inclusive histories of Canadian culture and commerce.

Unexpected, overlooked stories emerge as central to Canada’s fashion history, from hybrid fashion cultures to re-used textiles in settler communities, and O’Connell highlights contemporary Canadian artists and designers who point to new possibilities to reclaim and preserve this cultural heritage.
By:  
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 236mm,  Width: 160mm,  Spine: 18mm
Weight:   660g
ISBN:   9781350357365
ISBN 10:   1350357367
Pages:   248
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Mark Joseph O’Connell PhD is Professor of Fashion Studies at Seneca College, Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Lilac Time at the Rodeo (2021). His essays have been published in Fashion Theory; Textile the Journal of Cloth and Culture; Fashion, Style & Popular Culture and Fashion Studies. He has lectured on fashion, material culture and craft-based social justice movements in the U.S., Mexico and Canada (in English and Spanish). Prior to teaching, Mark worked as a designer both in-house at M.A.C Cosmetics and for his own clothing line, Modular Menswear.

Reviews for Canadian Fashion Economies: A Select History of Fashion Culture, Commerce, and Colonization

Ranging from the pre-colonial era through the present, Canadian Fashion Economies is a valuable, vibrantly-written consideration of First Nations, French, and English Canadian fashion cultures. O’Connell provides insightful close readings of specific garments and textiles, skillfully situating these fashion objects in local, national, and global fashion cultures. Illuminating the connections between fashion and survival, cultural, local and national identity, and national and global networks of trade and exchange, his monograph is a significant, engaging contribution to the growing body of scholarship on Canadian fashion history. * Dr Holly Kent, Associate Professor of History, University of Illinois Springfield, USA *


See Also