Animal Fashions

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.

Chapter 1: Introduction: Cruelties of Fashion. - Part I: Collection. - Chapter 2: Bird[s] Matter: The Case of Hummingbirds. - Chapter 3: Collecting Coleoptera: Nineteenth Century Science and Fashion. - Chapter 4: From Sexual Selection to
Sex and The City:
The Biogeographies of a Blue Bird-of-Paradise. - Part II: Conquest . - Chapter 5: Stylish Scarabs: Egyptian Fashion and Colonial Consumption in Amelia Edwards
A Thousand Miles up the Nile
. - Chapter 6: The Commodification of Indian Tigers Body Parts as Luxurious and Occult Items: Exploring the India-Britain Relationship (1858-1940). - Chapter 7: Beetles Wings and Serpents Scales: Ellen Terry s Lady Macbeth and the Victorian Animal-Woman. - Part III: Display. - Chapter 8: Free Spirits with Wild Hearts: The Reclamation of Black Femme Humanity Through Animal Skins and Prints in Burlesque Performan. - Chapter 9: Victorian Vanities and Frivolous Women: Fashionable Desires and the Muff. - Chapter 10: Puss Hat: Taxidermized Excess in the Gilded Age and the Internet Era.