In this fascinating, accessible book, Gen Doy investigates the hitherto neglected meanings of drapery and the draped body in visual culture. The Baroque and the classical are her subjects, as are Freud's Gradiva, Clerambault's writings and photographs of draped figures and Christo's wrapped Reichstag but she also finds and focuses on the draped body now in countries like Algeria and Kosovo where drapery's connotations are no longer those of purity and civilised elegance, but of barbarism, poverty, and savage death.