Book excerpt: "Carter fully revives early 'fashion theorists' - some canonical and others less well known - and examines them in light of more recent work. From Carlyle's fantastical character Professor Teufelsdröckh, through the first Freudian analysis of clothes by J.C. Flugel, the pioneering work of Spencer, Veblen, Simmel, Kroeber, Laver and finally to Barthes' monumental work on the modern fashion system, this book explores and explains the foundations of fashion theory. Not only does it provide an historical outline of Western conceptions of clothes and fashion, but it also demonstrates the existence of a distinct intellectual genealogy through which these phenomena have been studies."--BOOK JACKET.