Synopses & Reviews
This book tests the very definition of modernity and enhances our understanding of the role of fashion in the modern world. From top hats to locomotives, dresses to retail outlets, fashion is a prism through which modernity reflects and refracts. Breward and Evans bring together an organic collaboration of voices on this subject. The collection ranges from such topics as James Morrison (1789-1857), the Napoleon of Shopkeepers; to dress in the Stuart era; The Mannequin Parade, 1900-1925; and clothing the London actress (1860-1914). From the relationship between clothing and forensic sciences, to the play of performance, parasexuality, and the celebrity,
Fashion and Modernity offers an enlightening look at fashion and the modern age.
Synopsis
If fashion is an expression of individuality, why do we all dress alike? Can modernity be described as the experience of 'feeling modern' and, if so, what part does fashion play? Answering these intriguing questions and many more, this pioneering book shows how the concepts of fashion and modernity are intimately linked. It argues that capitalism and identity construction as social processes both have symbiotic relationships with the fashion system. Technology, the body, nationality and gender are informed and shaped by modernity, and vice versa. Drawing on key modernist texts as well as fashion theory and practice, this book seeks broadly to cover the history of fashion and modernity, a topic that has been surprisingly overlooked. Tackling themes including court masques in seventeenth-century London, Paris couturiers and forensic laboratories in twentieth-century Washington, the authors show how fashion throughout history has been a cornerstone in the construction of a modern self.
About the Author
Christopher Breward is Professor in Historical and Cultural Studies, London College of Fashion.
Caroline Evans is Reader in Fashion Studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
Table of Contents
Fashion and Modernity--Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans * Introduction--Caroline Evans and Christopher Breward * Fashion and Modernity--Elizabeth Wilson * Producing Identities *James Morrison (1789-1857), "Napoleon of Shopkeepers," Millionaire Haberdasher, Modern Entrepreneur--Caroline Dakers * Response--John Styles * Lee Miller and the Limits of Post-War British Modernity: Femininity, Fashion, and the Problem of Biography--Becky Conekin * Response: Modernity, Fashion and the Feminine: The Paradoxes of Lee Miller and the Limits of Biography--Carol Tulloch * People Dress So Badly Nowadays: Fashion and Late Modernity--Andrew Hill * Response--Adam Briggs * Performing Bodies * Court Masques: Tableaux of Modernity in the Early Seventeenth Century--Andrea Stuart * Response: Modernity and the Stuart Masque--Susan North * Ambiguous Role Models: Fashion, Modernity and the Victorian Actress--Christopher Breward * Response: Burlesque, Musical Theatre and the Residual Zone of Fashion--Lynda Nead * Movement, Model, Mode, Multiple: The Mannequin Parade 1900-1929--Caroline Evans * Response--Andrew Bolton * Processes of Modernity * The Fingerprint of the Second Skin--Response--Esther Leslie * Cuttings and Pastings--Alistair O'Neill * Response: Cuttings and Pasting - Filing Between Schwitters and Schiaparelli--Barry Curtis * Entropy (Fashion) and Emergence--Jamie Brassett * Response: Fashion's Rhythms - A Response to Jamie Brassett--Ben Highmore