Fabrications: Costume and the Female Body

by Jane M. Gaines (Editor), Charlotte Herzog (Editor)

Fabrications begins with a single germ in feminist film theory--the "to-be-looked-at" aesthetic described by Laura Mulvey--and pushes it further, considering the pleasures women derive from consumer culture against the social costs they have paid as wife, mother, and worker. Here, American feminist film theory converges with British cultural studies; critics survey the connections between the female consumer and the female viewer, the motion picture industry and the ready wear industry, the fashion in critical theory and the fashion in clothes. Contributors: Jeanne Allen, Sarafina K. Bathrick, Charles Eckert, Jane M. Gaines, Charlotte Herzog, Angela McRobbie, Betsy Holdsworth Nielson, Laurie Schulze, Gaye Studlar, Maureen Turim, Elizabeth Wilson.

Genres: Fashion

244 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1990

Reviews

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthology of articles about women's costume in film, mostly classic era films. Includes a reprint of the seminal "The Carole Lombard in Macy's Window) and an excellent piece by Jane Gaines on how costume functions in Hollywood narrative. Not painfully academic, though "Masochism, Masquerade, and the Erotic Metamorphoses of Marlene Dietrich" comes close