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.
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 *