This course considers the ways in which fashion entered everyday life with a particular focus on London and New York c1890-2020. Taking cultural theorist Michel de Certeau’s notion of ‘the everyday’ as a critical starting point, we will consider how fashion shapes and is shaped by the everyday. Based on the book of the same name, by Hazel Clark and Cheryl Buckley [2017], we will look historically at the imprint of fashion within everyday routines and leisure activities. In doing so it identifies the ‘fashion system of the ordinary’ in which clothing played a distinct role in the making of self and identity. Set in two major cities which were socially, culturally and ethnically diverse, as well as increasingly fashionable, the course re-focuses fashion discourse away from the familiar power-laden dynamics to a re-evaluation of time, memory and the representation of history. Theories of everyday life articulated by social and cultural theorists including Simmel, Lefebvre, and Goffman will provide a lens through which to re-examine familiar and less familiar aspects of 20th and 21st century fashion. The importance of place and space, and issues of gender, race, and social class, provides the broader framework, revealing fashion as both routine and exceptional, and as an increasingly significant part of urban life. Assignments will include the critical analysis of texts and images, and a research project.