Activity: External talk or presentation › Invited talk
Description
An invited talk for the study day: Twentieth-Century Radicals
Nudists might seem an unlikely subject for a fashion historian to study but in interwar England there was surprising overlap between nudists and fashion writers. Famous names in fashion history from J. C. Flugel (author of 1930's The Psychology of Clothes) to James Laver (author of 1937's Taste and Fashion) were practicing nudists. Interwar nudist publications were full of articles about dress and its reform. For these radical experimenters and free-thinkers, the reform of dress often meant its full elimination. This talk analyses their theories and practices.