The Dress Detective is the first practical guide to analysing 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, this book will give any budding fashion historian, curator or researcher the knowledge and confidence to analyse the material in front of them effectively.
Modern Fashion Traditions is a provocative exploration of the phenomenon of fashion that is found in non-western cultures that are developing fashion cities and spaces of consumption in ...contradistinction to mainstream ‘western’ fashion. To date, insofar as non-western fashion (as opposed to dress) has been studied, non-western fashion has been regarded as a product of globalization and the pervasive spread of western fashion rather than as separate fashion systems with their own logics, tensions and histories. In particular, this volume examines the similarities and differences within and between these self-contained yet dynamic and dialectical fashion systems that can be found in a wide range of non-western regions and contexts. The overarching framework used to explore this phenomenon problematizes the key oppositions conventionally used to describe fashion in non-Eurocentric contexts, namely: tradition and modernity, continuity versus change, local versus global, commodification versus self-expression, and self orientalism versus nationalism; above all, the volume challenges the assumption of fashion as ‘the West versus the Rest’. The chapters in Modern Fashion Traditions bring together case studies from diverse contexts that are cultural powerhouses with distinctive fashion systems including Japan, China, India, Bhutan, Turkey, Africa and Australia to challenge preconceptions about non-western fashion. Throughout, authors question the assumption of tradition as the foundation of non-western dress habits, instead arguing that there are dynamic interplays and re-workings of mainstream global fashion to carve out unique and robust fashion cultures and subcultures with distinctively local references. Furthermore, these defy the usual assumptions about the phenomenon of fashion and the defining role of Euro-centrism as overriding Orientalism and Otherness in the forging of powerful fashion cultures and identities.
Street Style Luvaas, Brent
2016, 2018, 2016-04-07
eBook
Street style blogging has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity over the last decade. Amateur photographers, often with no formal training in fashion, have become critical arbiters of taste and ...trends, influencing the representations that appear in magazines and on runways, and putting new cities on the fashion world map. This cutting-edge book documents the evolution of street style photography, from the fieldwork photos of early anthropology to the glamorized snapshots that appear on blogs today, and explores the structural shifts in the global fashion industry that street style has helped bring about. Chronicling author and anthropologist Brent Luvaas’ experience over three years of blogging through vivid street imagery and rich ethnographic detail, this book turns the lens of street style photography back onto anthropology itself, arguing that the phenomenon is a powerful mode of amateur ethnography. Bloggers blur the distinction between professional and amateur, insider and outsider, self and brand. This book documents that blur from the ground level–from the streets of Philadelphia to the sidewalks of New York Fashion Week. Street Style is an essential read for students and scholars of fashion, anthropology, sociology, media and cultural studies, and fans of street style photography alike.
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.
Dress History Charlotte Nicklas, Annebella Pollen / Charlotte Nicklas, Annebella Pollen
2015, 2015-10-22
eBook
The field of dress history has experienced exponential growth over the past two decades. This in-depth investigation examines the expanding borders and porous boundaries of the discipline today, ...outlining key debates and showcasing the most exciting research. With international case studies from a wide range of scholars, the volume encompasses work from a variety of historical periods from the late 18th century to the present day. Contributors examine, critique and expand the methodologies and sources used in fashion history, analyse how dress is collected, displayed and sold, and investigate clothing's meanings and uses in the practice of identity. Exploring overlooked territories and new approaches to analysis, the book offers students and scholars a fresh appraisal of dress history in the 21st century.
Over the past 40 years, Japanese designers have led the way in aligning fashion with art and ideology, as well as addressing identity and social politics through dress. They have demonstrated that ...both creative and commercial enterprise is possible in today's international fashion industry, and have refused to compromise their ideals, remaining autonomous and independent in their design, business affairs and distribution methods. The inspirational Miyake, Yamamoto and Kawakubo have gained worldwide respect and admiration and have influenced a generation of designers and artists alike. Based on twelve years of research, this book provides a richly detailed and uniquely comprehensive view of the work of these three key designers. It outlines their major contributions and the subsequent impact that their work has had upon the next generation of fashion and textile designers around the world. Designers discussed include: Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, Naoki Takizawa, Dai Fujiwara, Junya Watanabe, Tao Kurihara, Jun Takahashi, Yoshiki Hishinuma, Junichi Arai, Reiko Sudo & the Nuno Corporation, Makiko Minagawa, Hiroshi Matsushita, Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Walter Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and Helmut Lang.
There is a new form of design practice within the contemporary fashion industry which is active in complex forms of social commentary and critique. While fashion in the modernist era has shown signs ...of criticism and subversion, these were either in the form of subcultures or perversions, such as punk or BDSM styling. Today, however, these genres have been absorbed into the fashion industry itself, meaning that "critical fashion" is now far from limited to the subcultures from which it came. This book explores this new space for criticism within the popular fashion sphere to demonstrate how designers are disrupting conventions, challenging beliefs and stirring change from within the system itself. Critical Fashion Practice considers a range of contemporary designers across the globe, from the US to Japan, whose conceptual designs embody this critical language, including case studies such as Rei Kawakubo's deconstructive silhouettes for Comme des Garçons and Walter Van Beirendonck's sadomasochistic menswear collections, amongst other key players such as Miuccia Prada, Vivienne Westwood and Viktor & Rolf. Arguing that the rise of critical fashion coincides with a noticeable decline in the criticality of art, Geczy and Karaminas go beyond slotting fashion into previously established art theories. Conceiving a new cultural role for fashion that affords insight into identity, class, race, sexuality and gender, this book shows how fashion can not only reflect and comment on, but can also be a part of social change.
Blurb: From Rococo to Edwardian fashions, Japanese street style has reinvented many western dress styles, reinterpreting and altering their meanings and messages in a different cultural and ...historical context. This wide ranging and original study reveals the complex exchange of styles and what they represent in Japan and beyond, contesting common perceptions of gender in Japanese dress and the notion that non-western fashions simply imitate western styles. Through case studies focussing on fashion image consumption in style tribes such as Kamikaze Girls, Lolita, Edwardian, Ivy Style, Victorian, Romantic and Kawaii, this ground-breaking book investigates the complexities of dress and gender and demonstrates the flexible nature of contemporary fashion and style exchange in a global context. Japanese Fashion Cultures will appeal to students and scholars of fashion, cultural studies, gender studies, media studies and related fields.
The study of fashion has expanded into a thriving field of inquiry, with researchers utilizing diverse methods from across subject disciplines to explore fashion and dress in wide–ranging contexts. ...With an emphasis on material culture and ethnographic approaches in fashion studies, this groundbreaking volume offers fascinating insights into the complex dynamics of research and fashion. Featuring unique case studies, with interdisciplinary scholars reflecting on their practical research experiences, Fashion Studies provides rich and nuanced perspectives on the use, and mixing and matching of methodological approaches — including object and image based research, the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods and the fluid bridging of theory and practice. Engaging with diverse subjects, from ethnographies of model casting and street–style blogging, wardrobe studies and a material culture analysis of global denim wearing, to Martin Margiela's design and archival methods, Fashion Studies presents complex approaches in a lively and informative manner that will appeal to students of fashion, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and related fields.
Mere clothing is transformed into desirable fashion by the way it is represented in imagery. /Fashion’s Double/ examines how meanings are projected onto garments through their representation, whether ...in painting, photography, cinema or online fashion film, conveying identity and status, eliciting fascination and desire. With in-depth case studies including the work of Nick Knight and Helmut Newton, film examples such as /The Hunger Games/, music video /Girl Panic/ by Duran Duran, and much more, this book analyses the interrelationship between clothing, identity, embodiment, representation and self-representation. Written for students and scholars alike, /Fashion’s Double/ will appeal to anyone studying fashion, cultural studies, art theory and history, photography, sociology, and film.
