Technology has been an essential factor in the production of dress and the cultures of fashion throughout human history‎.‎ Structured chronologically from prehistory to the present day‎,‎ this is the first broad study of the complex relationship between dress and technology‎.‎ Over the course of human history‎,‎ dress‎-making and fashion technology has changed beyond recognition‎:‎ from needles and human hands in the ancient world to complex 20th‎-century textile production machines‎,‎ it has now come to include the technologies that influence dress styles and the fashion industry‎,‎ while fashion itself may drive aspects of technology‎.‎ In the last century‎,‎ new technologies such as the electronic media and high‎-tech manufacturing have helped not just to produce but to define fashion‎:‎ the creation of automobiles prompted a decline in long skirts for women while the beginnings of space travel caused people to radically rethink the function of dress‎.‎ In many ways‎,‎ technology has itself created avant garde and contemporary fashions‎.‎ Through an impressive range of international case studies‎,‎ the book challenges the perception that fashion is unique to western dress and outlines the many ways in which dress and technology intersect‎.‎ Dress‎,‎ Fashion and Technology is ideal reading for students and scholars of fashion studies‎,‎ textile history‎,‎ anthropology and cultural studies‎.‎