"You are part of the history of fashion," writes Project Runway's Gunn (Tim Gunn's Guide to Style) in his latest book. Indulging his professorial side—as former chair of fashion design at Parsons The New School for Design—he examines why people wear what they do and uses film stills, ads, photos, and paintings to illustrate. Gunn breezes through entertaining histories of wardrobe staples like dress shirts, jeans, sweaters, and hosiery, while dispensing plenty of opinionated but friendly what-to-wear/how-to-shop advice (No cargo capris! Try shapewear!). One chapter relates how the T-shirt jumped the underwear/outerwear divide after World War II because returning GIs wore them as the latter, then they were adopted by counterculture icons. Lamenting the rise of casual athletic wear for every occasion, Gunn exhorts Americans to use the past as inspiration for developing a personal style. VERDICT Gunn acknowledges that there are more academic treatments of this subject available; his history is explicitly meant for general readers. A chatty, popular fashion history, this book is great fun and best for those interested in an introduction to the past lives of what we wear.—Lindsay M. King, Yale Univ. Lib., New Haven, CT