Synopses & Reviews
Drawing on a wonderful array of sources, from fashion magazines such as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue to department store records and surviving garments, The American Look presents a rich and multi-faceted exploration of the development of a distinct New York fashion style in the 1930s and 1940s.
Tracing the growth of the sportswear fashion industry from its functional origins to its adoption as casual wear for all occasions by career women and housewives alike, author Rebecca Arnold shows how New York's emergent style in the interwar period was both dynamic and modern--much like the city itself. She argues that its essence was expressive of the American ideal of athletic, long-limbed figures and related to theories of body image, gender and class; that its designers such as Claire McCardell, Clare Potter and Tina Leser, were themselves embodiments of the modern, active woman; and that its style was connected not just to ideals of patriotism and democracy, but to notions of cleanliness and hygiene.
Beautifully illustrated, The American Look offers a unique insight into fashion, modernity and ideas of Americanness in the twentieth century.
Review
"Written with clarity, elegance and meticulous attention to detail, this important new book raises the bar for fashion scholarship. Here is a genuinely new history that both challenges existing myths about Paris and sets American fashion in its proper cultural and economic context. Rebecca Arnolds adroit study shows how the lens of fashion can be refocused to reveal important insights about gender, identity and nationhood."--Caroline Evans, Professor of Fashion History and Theory, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London
Synopsis
From the end of the 1930s through the 1940s, the New York fashion industry came into its own. Sportswear, which had evolved from its sporting origins to include simple casual wear for town and country, travel and leisure, was at the centre of this shift. Sportswear provided busy career women, college girls and housewives with clothes that could be worn on all occasions.Drawing on a wonderful array of sources, from fashion magazines to department store records, this book is the rich and absorbing narrative and analysis of how New York sportswear evolved to become the definitive American style and how a modern fashion aesthetic was born. The story that unfolds reveals, with the aid of some wonderful illustrations, how New York's emergent style became dynamic and modern, like the city itself, expressive of the American ideal of athletic, long-limbed women; and how it tapped into both metropolitan Americanness and the America of wide-open spaces.It explores the designers, such as Claire McCardell, Clare Potter and Tina Leser, themselves embodiments of the modern, active woman, and how they gave middle class American women New York sportswear as an alternative to Parisian-inspired designs.
It looks for the first time at how its style connected not just to ideals of patriotism and democracy, but to current notions of cleanliness and hygiene, and for example, to 1930s theories of body image, and contemporary dance.
About the Author
Rebecca Arnold is Research Fellow in the History of Design Department at the Royal College of Art in London. She was Guest Professor in Fashion Studies at Stockholm University, 2006-2007. As Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, University of the Arts, she established the first UK undergraduate degree in Fashion History & Theory. She has lectured and written widely on twentieth-century fashion. Her first book, Fashion, Desire & Anxiety: Image & Morality in the Twentieth Century was published by I.B. Tauris in 2001.
Table of Contents
* List of Illustrations * Acknowledgements* Introduction * New York and the Evolution of Sportswear * New York City * Sportswear * Modern Sportswear Aesthetic I * American Body Culture * Body Image/Body Culture * Health and Hygiene * Exercise and Dance * Sports Body * Sportswear and the New York Fashion Industry * During the Depression * Effects of the Depression * Career Women * Fashion Group * Sportswears Promotion During the 1930s * New York Department Stores * Fashion Media * The Monastic Dress and the Sportswear Promotion in the late 1930s * Sportswear and the New York Fashion Industry * During the Second World War * Effects of the Second World War * Sportswear Design and Representation * Modern Sportswear Aesthetic II *The American Look and the Rise of the Designer * The American Look * New York Sportswear Designers and Consumerism * The Woman of Fashion 1947 * Conclusion * Bibliography *