San Antonio College Library

"Manlow offers a comprehensive view of the ways in which creative decisions are made, leading up to the creation of actual styles. She helps to define the contribution fashion firms make in upholding, challenging, or redefining the social order. Readers will find this a fascinating examination of an industry that is quite visible, but little understood."--Jacket.

Beauty seems simple; we know it when we see it. But of course our ideas about what is attractive are influenced by a broad range of social and economic factors, and in Beauty and Business leading historians set out to provide this important cultural context. How have retailers shaped popular consciousness about beauty? And how, in turn, have cultural assumptions influenced the commodification of beauty? The contributors here look to particular examples...

Over the last decade, ugly allegations of corporate complicity in human-rights violations have exploded into one of the most controversial issues of our time. Companies are being held responsible by human-rights advocates for the injustices that are the unintended side effects of economic globalization: union repression in China, forced labor in Burma, child workers in Pakistan, and sweatshop abuse throughout the developing world. Using the story...