Costume

Costume: Performing Identities through Dress is revelatory. . . . Shukla shares research across three continents . . . and within several contexts to show how what we wear defines us on personal and community levels. . . . Costume is a wide-ranging book bringing attention to clothing as part of festivals and folk heritage events, pop culture conventions and dramatic performances.

Although her book is based on scholarly research, Shukla's engaging writing style and rich illustrations make for a highly accessible and enduring work. . . . Highly recommended.

This collection of case studies is well worth a read for anyone interested in the physical, psychological, communal, and transformative power of costume.

In drawing together these diverse studies and revealing the structural parallels between the behaviours underlying them, she has contributed to the study and interpretation of dress and costume, her ethnographic methodology throughout facilitating an emphasis on shared humanity.

Written in straightforward and enjoyable prose, this text provides a valuable resource both for teachers of material culture and costume researchers. Shukla highlights costume as a method for both socio-cultural and personal expression through vivid portraits of individuals. Visual, accessible, and conscientiously attentive to the people featured, Costume is a broad and thorough examination of how a heightened form of dress indicates to observers a rich and heightened version of self.