Fashion Foundations fills this major gap in the history of the discipline. This key text reprints a collection of pioneering fashion statements. Vital yet sometimes ignored treasures are brought together for the first time, tracing fashion writing from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Why do we wear clothes? What do they say about our self-awareness and body image? How can we "fashion" new identities through what we wear? In this book, Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt, Herbert Spencer, Thorstein B. Veblen, Adam Smith, Herbert Blumer, and Georg Simmel answer these questions and many more. In the process they reveal the true origins of our contemporary approach to fashion.