When Broadway Was the Runway: Theater, Fashion, and American Culture

by Marlis Schweitzer

Selected by "Choice" magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2009"When Broadway Was the Runway" explores the central and largely unacknowledged role of commercial Broadway theater in the birth of modern American fashion and consumer culture. Long before Hollywood's red carpet spectacles, Broadway theater introduced American women to the latest styles. At the beginning of the twentieth century, theater impresarios captured the imagination of their largely female patrons by transforming the stage into a glorious site of consumer spectacle.Theater historian Marlis Schweitzer examines how these impresarios presented the dresses actresses wore onstage, as well as the jewelry and hairstyles they chose, as commodities that were available for purchase in nearby department stores and salons. The Merry Widow Hat, designed for the hit operetta of the same name, sparked an international craze, and the dancer Irene Castle became a fashion celebrity when she anticipated the flapper look of the 1920s by nearly a decade. Not only were the latest styles onstage, but advertisements appeared throughout theaters, in programs, and on the curtains, while magazines such as "Vogue" vied for the rights to publish theatrical costume sketches and "Harper's Bazar" enticed readers with photo spreads of actresses in couture. This combination of spectatorship and consumption was a crucial step in the formation of a mass market for consumer goods and the rise of the cult of celebrity.Through historical analysis and dozens of early photographs and illustrations, Schweitzer aims a spotlight at the cultural and economic convergence of the theater and fashion industries in the United States.

Genres: Fashion

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Go-Go Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love fashion and I love theater but I didn't love this book. It was like reading a super long paper written by a first year gender studies student who has no interest in the topic. But if you like reading a lot of words that end in ization like the "democratization of fashion" or "commercialization of fashion" then this book is for you.

[Greta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting study on the relatively brief period of time in the late 19th and early 20th century when Broadway provided a major showcase for contemporary fashion. In the first chapter, if you took out the words "Broadway" or "stage" and substituted "cinema," the chapter would read just the same as a lot of studies of early cinema and the social anxiety caused by changing audience demographics in a changing society and its relation to other new consumer phenomena such as department stores. Since I approached this book with an interest more in film than in the stage, relevant issues were the plays that were frequently turned into films (many now lost), and the way that in the late 1910s and 1920s film took over from Broadway the role of disseminating fashion information. Nice pictures, too!