- Fashion is often thought of as a matter of personal taste. This book reveals that, from the French Revolution to Post-Revolutionary China, fashion has played a significant role in the political participation and protest.""How did "dressing up" in a variety of ways allow suffragette women to perform unconventional forms of political protest? In what ways did the uniforms of scouts and guides function to erect gender, racial and religious boundaries? Following the ban on traditional clothing in Imperial Russia, how did Russians appropriate European fashions and ethnic costumes to fashion new identities for themselves? Using these and a wealth of other case studies, Fashioning the Body Politic offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between men, women and fashion and shows that the political domain has always been permeated with the cultural practices of dress, display and bodily performance. Contents : Introduction: (ad)dressing citizens / Wendy Parkins -- The formation and currency of a vestimentary stereotype: the sans-culotte in Revolutionary France / Richard Wrigley -- Subject in citizens' the politics of clothing in imperial Russia / Christine Ruane -- Tailoring the nation: fashion writing in nineteenth-century Argentina / Regina A. Root -- 'The epidemic of purple, white and green': fashion and the suffragette movement in Britain, 1908-14 / Wendy Parkins -- Scouts, guides, and fashioning the of empire, 1919-39 / Tammy M. Proctor -- Peeking under the black shirt: Italian Fascism's disembodied bodies / Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi -- Camisas nuevas: style and uniformity in the flange Española 1933-43 / Mary Vincent -- Blankets: the visible politics of indigenous clothing in Australia / Margaret Maynard -- Children's day: the fashionable performance of modern citizenship in China / Stephaine Hemelryk Donald -- Afterthought: redressing the balance in historiography / Roger Griffin.