Fear and Fashion in the Cold War

by Jane Pavitt

From Barbarella’s bikini to vinyl radiation suits to high-tech jewelry, the Cold War’s impact on fashion was unmistakable.

 

Atomic anxieties, the space race, technological developments, and the first forays into “super-reality” led to innovations in materials, the cybernetic visions of the 1960s, and a range of surprising responses from artists, filmmakers, scientists, and designers. With a stunning selection of images, including photographs by fashion luminaries such as John French, Fear and Fashion in the Cold War explores how the image of the body was shaped by Cold War concerns between 1945 and 1970. In this engaging book, Jane Pavitt incorporates military, political, and scientific research in an engrossing discussion of how countercultural theories and experiences in the later 1960s shaped an alternative view of the “Cold War Body.”

Genres: Fashion, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

Reviews

[Juliana · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is based on a museum exhibit and reads similarly 👩🏻‍🚀🫧💿

[Phair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lately I've been looking back to my younger days a lot. This book discusses the influence of Cold War technology and paranoia on dress and lifestyle. The focus is the late 50s thru early 70s and it was fun reliving a lot of what happened in my childhood thru early adulthood. Made me recall the 'house of the future' at the '64 NY World's Fair, the explosion of synthetics, paper dresses (I still have one!), Emma Peel's cat suits. The future didn't turn out much like it was envisioned but this was fun! Too bad all the pictures were black & white.

[Matthew Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish it were possible to give things 4 and a half stars. This book is amazing, at least for the first 80%. I started taking notes and then eventually realized that I was basically just transcribing the whole book, so excited was I about everything to do with spacesuits and cold war fashion. But in the last fifteen pages there's a not-totally-justified jump towards more conceptual, architectural pieces that was a lot more academic and a lot less fun. Still, totally worth reading.

[frutigeraero · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the part where she talked about fashion

[Stephen Shapiro · Rating 2 out of 5]

A spin-off of the V&A's Cold War Modern exhibit, Fear and Fashion is less about the full range of fashion responses to the Cold War than the techno-fascination and techno-phobia of Western fashion in the 1950s and 60s, and the (limited) ways in which the Eastern Bloc responded to the same issues.