Animal Fashions: Colonialism, Collecting, and Gender

This book examines material artifacts that inhabit the intersection between fashion, colonialism and biological specimen collection. More broadly, this book demonstrates the significance of animal fashion in the nineteenth century, its relation to the Victorian imperial project, and the way the female body has been used to display the exploitation of natural resources as a product of colonialism.  By adorning the female body with natural specimens, the Victorians and nineteenth-century high society showed mastery over the areas from which the animals were collected, and women’s bodies became, simultaneously, both the object possessed and the canvas for a display of colonial wealth.  This interdisciplinary collection crosses the humanities, the arts, and the sciences, and is thus uniquely positioned to examine the nexus of cultural studies and scientific discourse by contextualizing fashion as representative of popular culture, feminine ideals, and scientific advancement.