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The childlike character of ideal femininity has long been critiqued by feminists from Mary Wollstonecraft to Simone de Beauvoir. This book examines the representation of women as childlike in western fashion media, and asks why this figure continues to hold appeal to women following three (or even four) waves of feminism. Exploring the ways in which the childlike model of femininity has cemented inequality between the sexes, The Woman-Child in Fashion Photography interrogates the centrality of this model in today's fashion media. Drawing on British fashion magazines including Vogue, i-D, and Lula, and based on original research into audience response, it focuses on how the meaning of childlike femininity has evolved in the years between 1990 and 2015. Taking us from Lolita to the catwalks of haute couture fashion houses, the book tests out theories on the 'female gaze' by inviting contemporary women to comment on images of the 'woman-child'. Both scholarly and accessible, it paves the way for future studies on how individuals make sense of fashion imagery.
In 1975 Laura Mulvey published her seminal essay on the male gaze, ushering in a new era in understanding the politics and theory of looking at the female body. Since then, feminist thinking has expanded upon and revised Mulvey's theory and much of the Western world has seen a resurgence in feminist activism as well as the rise of neoliberalism and shifts in digital culture and (self-)representation. For the first time, this book addresses what it means to look at the fashioned female body in this radical new landscape. In chapters exploring the fashioned body within contexts such as queerness, veiling, blackness, pregnancy, fatness, and criminality, Revisiting the Gaze addresses intersectional debates in feminism and re-evaluates the concept of the gaze in light of recent social and political changes. With an interdisciplinary approach, bridging fashion and fine art, this book opens the door to discussions about the male gaze and the fashioned body.
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Shortlisted for the Millia Davenport Publication Award Experimental Fashion traces the proliferation of the grotesque and carnivalesque within contemporary fashion and the close relation between fashion and performance art, from Lady Gaga's raw meat dress to Leigh Bowery's performance style. The book examines the designers and performance artists at the turn of the twenty-first century whose work challenges established codes of what represents the fashionable body. These innovative people, the book argues, make their challenges through dynamic strategies of parody, humour and inversion. It explores the experimental work of modern designers such as Georgina Godley, Bernhard Willhelm, Rei Kawakubo and fashion designer, performance artist, and club figure Leigh Bowery. It also discusses the increased centrality of experimental fashion through the pop phenomenon, Lady Gaga.
The ability to analyze and interpret visual information is essential in fashion. However, students tend to struggle with the concept of visual research, as well as with the application of that research. Visual Research Methods in Fashion provides students with techniques, tools and inspiration to master their visual research skills and make the research that they undertake more effective. Illustrated with real-life examples from practitioners in the industry, academics and students, it focuses on the global nature of the industry and the need to develop ideas relevant to the market.
Why do some book covers instantly grab your attention, while others never get a second glance? Fusing word and image, as well as design thinking and literary criticism, this captivating investigation goes behind the scenes of the cover design process to answer this question and more. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW As the outward face of the text, the book cover makes an all-important first impression. The Look of the Book examines art at the edges of literature through notable covers and the stories behind them, galleries of the many different jackets of bestselling books, an overview of book cover trends throughout history, and insights from dozens of literary and design luminaries. Co-authored by celebrated designer and creative director Peter Mendelsund and scholar David Alworth, this fascinating collaboration, featuring hundreds of covers, challenges our notions of what a book cover can and should be.
Beyond the Heteronorm: Interrogating Critical Alterities in Global Art and Literature explores exclusionary practices inspired by the construct of gender and how these conventions often misconstrue and convolute sex, gender, and sexual orientation. The contributors to this collection examine literary and visual representations of critical alterities from around the globe to produce empathic and inclusive analyses of experiences shared between diverse subordinated and minoritized socio-cultural entities and collectives. Organized into three parts, the chapters critique the concepts of personhood, performativity, and the post-binary. This edited collection deconstructs gender essentialism and embraces gender inclusivity in both theory and practice.
Popular media present a vast array of stories about women and men. What impact do these images and ideas have on people’s identities? The new edition of Media, Gender and Identity is a highly readable introduction to the relationship between media and gender identities today. Fully revised and updated, including new case studies and a new chapter, it considers a wide range of research and provides new ways for thinking about the media’s influence on gender and sexuality. David Gauntlett discusses movies such as Knocked Up and Spiderman 3, men’s and women’s magazines, TV shows, self-help books, YouTube videos, and more, to show how the media play a role in the shaping of individual self-identities. The book includes: a comparison of gender representations in the past and today, from James Bond to Ugly Betty an introduction to key theorists such as Judith Butler, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault an outline of creative approaches, where identities are explored with video, drawing, or Lego bricks a Companion Website with extra articles, interviews and selected links, at: www.theoryhead.com.
Fashion and Feeling: The Affective Politics of Dress explores the complex nexus of fashion and the feeling body from a variety of critical perspectives across fashion studies, anthropology, sociology, design practice, and media studies. It asks such questions as: What does fashion look and feel like in an age dominated by amplified anxiety, isolation, depression, and precariousness? How are feelings woven into clothing and mobilized through fashion practices in ways that might sustain living with a sense of ongoing crisis? Does fashion have the potential to help us reimagine new lifeworlds which might be reinvigorating? In other words, how is fashion engaging with the “bad,” the “good,” and the ambivalent feelings associated with our personal and collective histories, with our troubled political present, and with our imagined future? Despite such diverse and scattered contributions, the potentialities of “feeling” for the study of fashion are still largely neglected. This edited volume seeks to tease out possible avenues of investigation of the clothed body and its representations through the lens of feeling.