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The Dress Detective is the first practical guide to analyzing fashion objects, clearly demonstrating how their close analysis can enhance and enrich interdisciplinary research. This accessible book provides readers with the tools to uncover the hidden stories in garments, setting out a carefully developed research methodology specific to dress, and providing easy-to-use checklists that guide the reader through the process. Beautifully illustrated, the book contains seven case studies of fashionable Western garments – ranging from an 1820s coat to a 2004 Kenzo jacket – that articulate the methodological framework for the process, illustrate the use of the checklists, and show how evidence from the garment itself can be used to corroborate theories of dress or fashion. This book outlines a skillset that has, until now, typically been passed on informally. Written in plain language, it will give any budding fashion historian, curator, or researcher the knowledge and confidence to analyze the material in front of them effectively.
Introduction -- 1 Artists & Wardrobes -- 2 The Slow Approach to Seeing -- 3 Observation -- 4 Reflection -- 5 Interpretation -- 6 Fashion & Identity -- 7 Fashion & Modernity -- 8 Fashion & Beauty 9 Fashion & Gender -- 10 Fashion & Politics -- Coda -- Appendix I Checklist for Observation -- Appendix II Checklist for Reflection -- Appendix III Checklist for Interpretation -- Bibliography -- Image -- Credits -- Index.
When, how and why do clothes become fashion? Fashion is more than mere clothing. It is a moment of invention, a distillation of desire, a reflection of a zeitgeist. It is also a business relying on an intricate network of manufacture, marketing and retail. Fashion is both medium and message but it does not explain itself. It requires language and images for its global mediation. It develops from the prescience of the designer and is dependent on acceptance by observers and wearers alike. When Clothes Become Fashion explores the structures and strategies which underlie fashion innovation, how fashion is perceived and the point at which clothing is accepted or rejected as fashion. The book provides a clear theoretical framework for understanding the world of fashion - its aesthetic premises, plurality of styles, performative impulses, social qualities and economic conditions.
Among the vast body of material on iconoclastic artist Marcel Duchamp, an aspect that is little-studied is his engagement with clothing. This book reveals that clothing and dressing are significant themes that recur in Duchamp's life and his work - including his drawings, his fashioning of his body, his readymades, and in his curatorial gestures. In examining the items of clothing worn by Duchamp and the related traces of his wardrobe management, Duchamp is unmasked as a dandy. His waistcoat readymade series Made to Measure (1957-1961) is in fact a remarkable and deliberate effort to recalibrate the definition of the readymade to include clothing. With this little-studied readymade series, Duchamp established a precedent for sartorial art as a valid form of artistic expression. In considering the material traces of Duchamp's fashioning of his body and identity in his work and life, this book makes a highly original contribution to the understanding of Duchamp's work as well as the significance of the clothed body in the vanguard of Modernism.
An 18th-century portrait of the palace most recognized as an official home of several British royal family members focuses on the Hanover family during the reigns of George I and II, describing the intrigue, ostentatious fashions and politicking that marked court life. By the author of Cavalier.
In this sparkling new vision of the notorious French queen, dynamic young historian Caroline Weber offers a moving reinterpretation of one of history’s most controversial figures. Marie Antoinette has always been recognised as a style icon, but none of her biographers has paid sustained attention to her clothes. Drawing on new research to illuminate each phase of the queen’s tumultuous life, Weber surveys the ‘Revolution in Dress’ undertaken by a fourteen-year-old girl accustomed to Austria’s more relaxed style, who rebelled against the organ-crushing whalebone corsets and vast hoop skirts of Versailles. She used striking, often extreme costumes to boost her public profile, particu...
Fashion is ever-changing, and while some styles mark a dramatic departure from the past, many exhibit subtle differences from year to year that are not always easily identifiable. With overviews of each key period and detailed illustrations for each new style, How to Read a Dress is an authoritative visual guide to women's fashion across five centuries. Each entry includes annotated color images of historical garments, outlining important features and highlighting how styles have developed over time, whether in shape, fabric choice, trimming, or undergarments. Readers will learn how garments were constructed and where their inspiration stemmed from at key points in history – as well as how dresses have varied in type, cut, detailing and popularity according to the occasion and the class, age and social status of the wearer. This lavishly illustrated book is the ideal tool for anyone who has ever wanted to know their cartridge pleats from their Récamier ruffles. Equipping the reader with all the information they need to 'read' a dress, this is the ultimate guide for students, researchers, and anyone interested in historical fashion.
"First published in 2002 by The National Gallery Company."
"A tribute to a time when style -- and maybe even life -- felt more straightforward, and however arbitrary, there were definitive answers." -- Sadie Stein, Paris Review As a glance down any street in America quickly reveals, American women have forgotten how to dress. We lack the fashion know-how we need to dress professionally and beautifully. In The Lost Art of Dress, historian and dressmaker Linda Przybyszewski reveals that this wasn't always true. In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable group of women -- the so-called Dress Doctors -- taught American women that knowledge, not money, was key to a beautiful wardrobe. They empowered women to design, make, and choose clothin...
Fashion is ever-changing, and while some styles mark a dramatic departure from the past, many exhibit subtle differences from year to year that are not always easily identifiable. With overviews of each key period and detailed illustrations for each new style, How to Read a Dress is an appealing and accessible guide to women's fashion across five centuries. Each entry includes annotated color images of historical garments, outlining important features and highlighting how styles have developed over time, whether in shape, fabric choice, trimming, or undergarments. Readers learn how garments were constructed and where their inspiration stemmed from at key points in history – as well as how ...