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A Cultural History of Fashion in the Twentieth Century: From the Catwalk to the Sidewalk
The 20th Century saw the effective end of haute couture, the rise of prêt à porter and, finally, the triumph of street fashion. Bonnie English unravels the complexities and contradictions behind these changes to chart the history of modern fashion. What caused the demise of haute couture in the 20th century? What does the "democratisation" of fashion actually mean? Which key designers bridged the gap between "couture," with its associations of elite class and taste, and "street style," a product of tribalism and of popular culture and protest? If fashion imitates art and art imitates life, does life imitate fashion--do we wear the clothes or do the clothes wear us? Setting fashion within its social, cultural and artistic context, this book presents an engaging history of the interplay between commerce and culture, technology and aesthetics, popular culture and pastiche, and fashion and anti-fashion.
- GenresFashionNonfictionHistory
224 pages, Paperback
First published August 7, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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December 16, 2010Bonnie English wants to teach you Fashion 101 (minus the student fees and late night study sessions)and “unravel the complications and contradictions behind stylistic change in order to chart the history of modern fashion.”
A senior lecturer in Art Theory at the Queensland College of Art, English has created a very respectable academic treatment of the last century of fashion. She begins her narrative with Louis XIV, predecessor of metrosexuals everywhere, and extends her analysis into globalized contemporary fashion, with everything from Comme des Garçons to Laura Ashley prints in between. What is most notable about the content of this volume is the way English handles her broad topic; there are some powerful fashion images in this book, but this is no pretty coffee table accessory. English selects unique subjects within fashion for each chapter and zeroes in to prevent a deluge of meaningless and broad historical summaries.
Exemplary are musings on Russian Dadaist visual artists and fashion designers Delaunay, Popova, and Stepanova. While they’re not an obvious point of interest within the history of costume, English creates a fashion tradition citing these women as Viktor and Rolf’s Neo-Dadaist forerunners, describing how they brought abstract designs into homes before abstract artists did. In short, English finds specific, and sometimes obscure, moments in dress, and writes her own fashion history canon.
The only real downside of the author’s scholarly style is that her astute dryness might be mistaken for condescension: she writes, “Perfume literally provides a touch of luxury to the mundane life of a middle-class consumer.” Her snooty phrasing is a minor sin, however, considering she pays tribute to the authors and inventors of even the most mundane paraphernalia; apparently my bean bag chair was designed by Gatti, Teodoro, and Paolini in 1968. As well, English makes some impressive connections by ascribing new meaning to common garments. For example, a t-shirt is aligned with “the quest to define ‘self’ amongst postmodernist youth culture.” Chanel is recognized for her methods “to achieve a greater ‘democratization’ of fashion” and Mary Quant’s mini-skirt is indicted as systematically “exclud[ing] older and larger women from being entirely fashionable.”
In A Cultural History of Fashion, English treats fashion as a thoughtful art form. She bases her book on the premise that, “arguably, all fashion is not art, but on occasion it can become art.” It is because of this stance that she can earnestly confront fashion as a deliberate act of design rather than a trendy accident… like jelly sandals. The triumph of the book is its ability to educate people about fashion in broad terms, infusing a renewed curiosity into this sometimes neglected or even dismissed scholarly discipline. I give it an A+. (reviewed by Stephanie Herold)
A senior lecturer in Art Theory at the Queensland College of Art, English has created a very respectable academic treatment of the last century of fashion. She begins her narrative with Louis XIV, predecessor of metrosexuals everywhere, and extends her analysis into globalized contemporary fashion, with everything from Comme des Garçons to Laura Ashley prints in between. What is most notable about the content of this volume is the way English handles her broad topic; there are some powerful fashion images in this book, but this is no pretty coffee table accessory. English selects unique subjects within fashion for each chapter and zeroes in to prevent a deluge of meaningless and broad historical summaries.
Exemplary are musings on Russian Dadaist visual artists and fashion designers Delaunay, Popova, and Stepanova. While they’re not an obvious point of interest within the history of costume, English creates a fashion tradition citing these women as Viktor and Rolf’s Neo-Dadaist forerunners, describing how they brought abstract designs into homes before abstract artists did. In short, English finds specific, and sometimes obscure, moments in dress, and writes her own fashion history canon.
The only real downside of the author’s scholarly style is that her astute dryness might be mistaken for condescension: she writes, “Perfume literally provides a touch of luxury to the mundane life of a middle-class consumer.” Her snooty phrasing is a minor sin, however, considering she pays tribute to the authors and inventors of even the most mundane paraphernalia; apparently my bean bag chair was designed by Gatti, Teodoro, and Paolini in 1968. As well, English makes some impressive connections by ascribing new meaning to common garments. For example, a t-shirt is aligned with “the quest to define ‘self’ amongst postmodernist youth culture.” Chanel is recognized for her methods “to achieve a greater ‘democratization’ of fashion” and Mary Quant’s mini-skirt is indicted as systematically “exclud[ing] older and larger women from being entirely fashionable.”
In A Cultural History of Fashion, English treats fashion as a thoughtful art form. She bases her book on the premise that, “arguably, all fashion is not art, but on occasion it can become art.” It is because of this stance that she can earnestly confront fashion as a deliberate act of design rather than a trendy accident… like jelly sandals. The triumph of the book is its ability to educate people about fashion in broad terms, infusing a renewed curiosity into this sometimes neglected or even dismissed scholarly discipline. I give it an A+. (reviewed by Stephanie Herold)
October 23, 2015
Fashion has a certain image for being aloof and dismissive of the greater good. It is often portrayed as being distant, cold and disinterested in everyone but itself. This book walked me through the history of how it came to be known as such, how it has changed throughout the century and how nostalgic it is even before we thought it was being nostalgic. For people who don't really understand fashion, this book is perfect as it explains everything you need to know about the industry as well. It mentions names I never knew before and how they apparently change the face and practice of the fashion industry as we know it. Although, I must say, it says nothing about the negative side of the fashion industry - which is probably understandable since this is written in the early 21st century, so it wasn't probably quite talked about then. It is also unclear how fast fashion came to be, probably because it was a long process and not something which changed overnight by just one perpetrator. It was the demand of the masses! This book definitely shed some light on some fashion-related issues as well as the history of fashion throughout the century, how things have changed!
January 14, 2012
good broad overview making the salient points, sketching a timeline and drawing tentative causal links to social, economic, political and cultural motions. necessarily glosses over A LOT and maybe overstates the representativeness of some samples, but really ended up satisfying the urge i had to chart a rough chronology of modern fashion design
January 18, 2014
it is a good book with a lot of facts and ideas!It could be better if there were more images and if they were not b&w!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews