A Perfect Fit

A striking and inventive social history of the role of clothing in the making of modern Americans. While fashions of the rich and famous have been lushly chronicled, little attention has been paid to the meaning of clothes for everyone else. Yet between 1890 and the outbreak of World War II, as ready-to-wear came into its own, the clothes of ordinary Americans claimed the nation's attention. Allied with civic virtue, fashion now played an increasingly important role in shaping the national chara