Barbara Burman teaches at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, where she is Director of the Centre for the History of Textiles and Dress. Her research interests and publications focus on the cultural and social history of dress and textiles in the modern period. She edited The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption and Home Dressmaking (Berg. 1999).

Carole Turbin is Professor Emeritus of History and Sociology at SUNY/Empire State College. She is author of Working Women of Collar City: Gender, Class and Community in Troy, New York, 1864-86 (University of Illinois, 1992) and numerous articles, including 'Collars and Consumers: Changing Images of American Manliss and Business', in Beauty and Business, ed. Phillip Scranton (Routledge, 2001.) She is also an artist who has exhibited in the NY area.