Essays on Fashion: Urban Fashion Culture in Australia, & The Melbourne Cup and Racewear in Australia

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Berg's Encylopedia of World Dress and Fashion is the world's leading annual academic reference book on fashion, respected for the analyses and interpretation of its contributing scholars. Volume 7 was the first edition of the encylopedia devoted to fashion in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Along with Margaret Maynard, Robyn Healy, Peter MCNeil and Vicki Karaminas, Juliette Peers was one of the leading Australian fashion academics invited to contribute. Her two substantial, scholarly essays were on urbanism and fashion and on the Melbourne Cup. RESEARCH CONTRIUBTION: In 'Urban Fashion Culture' Peers presented a new argument that Australian urbanism, particularly Melbourne urbanism, was perhaps more open and sophisticated in the late nineteenth century than it was in the 1940s and 1950s. She drew on new primary source research to argue that the Australian fashion industry was more competitive and innovative than stereotypes have suggested. Her essay on Melbourne Cup fashions placed this lucrative sub-genre of fashion of apparel in a historic context and traced the development of racing fashion from its military roots in 1810 to the ritualised track dress codes of the present. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE:The significance of these two essays is demonstated by their inclusion in Bergs encylopedia. Like Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Berg is not simply an information hub but a location for authoritative analysis and interpretation that shapes understanding of the fashion discipline at an international level. Together the essays in this collection are the most intellectually rigorous account of contemporary and historical Australian fashion.