Christopher breward 1998 cultures, identities, histories: fashioning a cultural approaching to dress.

The conception of fashion as a magical system, which might benefit from textual or linguistic scrutiny, is an area also well tested in the field of film theory and history. The dress historian can draw useful methodology parallels from the way in which authors such as Jane Gaines 1990, PamCook 1996 and Christine Gledhill 1987 take examples of cinema and describe the manner in which filmic images interact with women's perceptions of themselves in terms of fashion, sexuality, maternal and marital duty and work. Gaines makes the connections with cultural studies linguistic abd political concerns explicit:

There us a significant link between the notion of woman displayed by her dress and woman displayed by other representational systems. In addition, one might say that contemporary feminists have understood woman's inscription in the codes if contemporary representation because they themselves know too well what it is to be fitted up for representation.