Dress
The Journal of CSA

Our Mission
Dress, the journal of the Costume Society of America, has been in publication since 1975 and represents the highest level of scholarship. The scope of the journal encompasses many diverse areas of study including dress in art, social history, anthropology, material culture, and museum studies. The journal also invites work on fundamental concerns such as theory, research methods, and analytical and interpretative papers that describe and place dress in cultural or historical context.
Call for Papers
Dress in America: 250 years of American Fashion
In 2026, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. As the country commemorates this momentous milestone, it is a great opportunity to examine the role of dress, clothing, textiles, and fashion in shaping ideas about the nation, its people, and its history. We invite submissions to a special issue “Dress in America: 250 Years of American Fashion” that will focus on the topics of what is American about American Fashion? How are American identities, past, present, and future, constructed through dress? How dress was used and imagined in commemorating the American experience? We especially encourage submissions that explore definitions of who or what is American, who belongs to the Nation, and how dress can be used as both an inclusionary and exclusionary tool in those definitions. Graduate students, early-career researchers, and museum practitioners are especially welcome to submit.
Areas of interest include for Dress:
- Material culture studies
- Dress in its many contexts: social, cultural, historical
- Scholarship related to the exhibition of dress
- Art and design of dress
- Dress historiography, research methodology, and theory
- Forums for topics that shape the field of dress scholarship
Dress includes articles, book and exhibition reviews, letters to the editor, and short reports. The complete archive for Dress from Volume 1, 1975 is available online for institutional subscribers and CSA members through instructions that can be found on the members-only website. The public Taylor and Francis website can be found here.
Principal Editor
Einav Rabinovitch-Fox (Case Western Reserve University)
Deputy Editor
Sonya Abrego
Copy Editor
Nancy Janzig
Editorial Board
Heather Marie Akou (Indiana University, USA)
Amber-Dawn Bear Robe (Institute of American Indian Arts, USA)
Laura Camerlengo (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, USA)
Daniel James Cole (New York University, USA)
Sha'Mira Covington (University of Georgia, USA)
Carmen Keist (Bradley University, USA)
Abby Lillethun (Montclair State University, USA)
Nazanin Hedayat Munroe (City University of New York, USA)
Victoria Rose Pass (Maryland Institute College of Art. USA)
Stephanie Saunders (Lyon College, USA)
Pravina Shukla (Indiana University, USA)
Monica Sklar (University of Georgia, USA)
Petra Slinkard (Peabody-Essex Museum, USA)
Juanjuan Wu (University of Minnesota, USA)
Christina Bates (Canadian Museum of History), Editor Emerita
Patricia Cunningham (Ohio State University, USA), Editor Emerita
Sally Helvenston Gray (Michigan State University, USA), Editor Emerita
Linda Welters (University of Rhode Island, USA), Editor Emerita
Issues of Dress Are Available for Purchase
To order current and past issues, please contact the Taylor & Francis Customer Services team at Adhoc@tandf.co.uk.