Bending The Rules

: Fashion Beyond The Binary

By Camille Benda with Gwyn Conaway

Bending the Rules is a fascinating, provocative, and highly entertaining visual exploration of identity and gender through fashion.

Celebrated costume designer Camille Benda seamlessly weaves together the cutting-edge and the historical—spanning high fashion, dress in film, trendsetting brands, art history, and more—showing that gender and fashion have always been intertwined.

Brought to life with a dazzling array of more than 160 images, Bending the Rules combines short essays and interviews with creative professionals to offer snapshots of fashion and gender expression across cultures, places, and time. This unique portrait of fashion and identity explores how clothing can be serious and playful, limiting or liberating, express joy or longing, fear or fun, and much more.

Camille Benda is an LA-based costume designer and faculty member at California Institute of the Arts, School of Theater. Camille designs costumes for film, theater, TV, and commercials across the US and Europe. Camille's most recent project was the costume design for both seasons of the hit show Bad Sisters on Apple TV+. She has a Master's of Fine Art in Theater Design from Yale School of Drama, and a Master's of Art from the Courtauld Institute in the History of Dress, and regularly speaks on dress and fashion history topics at museums like the Victoria and, Albert and has moderated panels for Disney. This is her second book.

Princeton Architectural Press, 2026, hardcover, 7.25 x 9.75 in, 224 pages.

Weight: 1.79 lbs (0.81 kg)