The Deep History of Dress
Fashion's Evolution with Human Cognition and Culture
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Description
Four thousand years ago in Babylon, a teenage scribe named Iddin-Sin wrote an indignant letter to his mother: everyone else's clothes get better every year, but his are getting worse. This brief complaint - our earliest known fashion grievance - becomes the starting point for a new history of dress.
In The Deep History of Dress, Otto von Busch reads Iddin-Sin's letter line by line, against the backdrop of Mesopotamian cities, textile trade, law, and schooling, to suggest fashion runs deeper in Western culture than previously thought. Drawing on anthropology, sociology, and the life sciences, he argues that fashion is not a recent, shallow invention of capitalism but a deep human organ of social sensing-a way we feel hierarchy, belonging, desire, and love on the social skin of our bodies.
From the deep history of cuneiform tablets to today, fashion appears here not as artifice or vanity but as a vital force-a social form in motion, a cognitive dynamic, a membrane between body and world, and a living record of civilization's pulse. Fashion is a symbiotic organ that has grown with us, shaped us, and dreamed alongside us since the dawn of history.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1. “Iddin-Sin sends the following message.”
A letter from Iddin-Sin
Teens across time
An early fashion disputation
Fashion, life, and metaphors
Fashion dynamics
In search of new origins
2. “... From year to year ...”
Things change
The aliveness of fashion
The breath of seasons
Fashion whiskers
Caught in sensible threads
Feeling and flirting
3. “... making my clothes poorer ...”
Mirroring and imitation
Playing ancient games
Life on the edge
The game of fashion
4. “... wool is used up like bread ...”
Abundance and culture
The fashion metabolism
A feast of fashion
In the metabolism of dreams
5. “... you fuss even about a single set of clothes for me ...”
Schooling the semiosphere
The school Umwelt
The pecking order
In the footprints of fashion
6. “... while you, you do not love me! ...”
Fashion metamorphosis
Of lamentation and longing
7. After Iddin-Sin
Thus spoke Iddin-Sin
Writing out of time
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | 10 Dec 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 192 |
| ISBN | 9781350527799 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Visual Arts |
| Illustrations | 10 bw illus |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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