Tansy E. Hoskins’ Stitched Up dissects fashion’s vampiric relationship with the planet and with our bodies to uncover what makes it so damaging.

Beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned designs, Stitched Up delves into the alluring world of fashion to reveal what is behind the clothes we wear. Moving between Karl Lagerfeld and Karl Marx, the book explores consumerism, class and advertising to reveal the interests which benefit from exploitation.

Tansy E. Hoskins dissects fashion’s vampiric relationship with the planet and with our bodies to uncover what makes it so damaging. Why does ‘size zero’ exist and what is the reality of working life for models? In a critique of the portrayal of race in fashion, the book also examines the global balance of power in the industry.

In a compelling conclusion Stitched Up explores the use of clothing to resist. Can you shock an industry that loves to shock? Is ‘green fashion’ an alternative? Stitched Up provides a unique critical examination of contemporary culture and the distorting priorities of capitalism.

‘A book that hangs like a garment on a coat-hanger. A garment with many pockets. In the pockets numberless notes and remarks about clothes and history. Take it off the hanger and put it on. By which I mean – read it and walk through history.’

(John Berger)

‘Tansy Hoskins interrogates today’s fashion landscape with rigour, intellectualism and gut instinct. Stitched Up contains a number of splendidly-articulated seminal moments that will make you view your wardrobe through a different lens. A fine investigation of the cultural tyranny of a multi billion pound industry [that] operates as if above censure.’

(Lucy Siegle, writer for The Observer and)

‘This is a wonderful book, bursting at the seams with power, passion and politics. Tansy Hoskins lays bare the capitalist relations of production, marketing and consumption that sustain the fashion industry, and calls for a revolution to liberate us from its tyranny. Clothes will never look the same again!’

(John Hilary, Executive Director at War o)

‘An incredible accomplishment…’

(Susie Orbach, author of Bodies and Fat i)

‘Thoroughly researched with a reach extending both globally and historically, the book is packed with interesting examples, and Hoskins’ engaging style makes it eminently readable’

(Scarlett MccGwire, LSE Review of Books)

‘Stripped of your ignorance, you will feel naked. But by the end of Stitched Up, you’ll realize that you always were.’

(Elizabeth Stilwell, fashion blogger)

‘The book takes a rigorous unflinching look at the fashion industry’s long list of offences’

(Marie-Claire Conlin, forbookssake.net)