Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture

by Brooke Hodge, Patricia Mears, Susan Sidlauskas

The first comprehensive examination of the many overlaps and visual and intellectual principles that unite fashion and architecture.

In recent years, the boundaries between architecture and fashion have become increasingly blurred, and this beautifully illustrated new book explores the intersections and concepts that underlie the two disciplines. Both architecture and fashion are based on the human body and on ideas of space, volume, and movement. Each functions as shelter or wrapping for the body—a mediating layer between the body and the environment—and can express personal, political, and cultural identity.

Fashion designers and architects share much of the same vocabulary and similar techniques of pinning, darting, folding, wrapping, draping. Fashion designers have always been able to achieve complex, often architectonic garments using fabric. Today, many architects are looking to fashion and techniques of tailoring as they attempt to achieve more and more complex forms using hard materials.

The book focuses on the period 1980 to the present and includes forty-six architects and fashion designers from the United States, Europe, and Japan. The featured designers include Issey Miyake, Junya Watanabe, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and Vivienne Westwood, among others. The architects include Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Eisenman Architects. 530 illustrations, 500 in color.

Genres: Fashion, Architecture

272 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[RebL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth picking up. I liked the architecture part better than the fashion part, but that's just me.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was inspired from the deconstruction fashion and design article. I had been thinking about a "frankincense" costume for the "Wearable ARts Christmas pageant" at church. I finished the GOLD costume with emma's alligator painting from High School which I cut up to make a pyramid. The pyramid went on the back of the night starry cape to symbolize that gold was used to get the holy family to Egypt. But the Frankincense costume hung over me. The charge was to make it symbolise prayer. I looked Frankincense up in wikipedia and found out about the tree and the look of it. I thought of making a smoke costume, of using a pendulum incense thing; then later of wearing a sandwich board with prayer verbs on it. Both stinky ideas.

So I read this deconstruction article....... sazaam! I went to the op shop and bought a beautiful, green woolen jersey and a white jacqui tee shirt. I cut long rectangles out of the jersey , put it on inside out and wrote the verbs of the lord's prayer in red on the tee. Then I blanket stiched the two together around the rectangles. On one sleeve I did a circle with "Bless" on the tee shirt. So just as Jesus deconstructed the prayers of Animal sacrifice and smoke I used a deconstructed fashion idea.

[Zelly B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great resource for my studio projects this semester in Tokyo. It's a really educational insight into the parallels between fashion and architecture, a topic I am very interested in where my designs are concerned.

I really wish I'd seen this exhibition when it came out, but alas I only discovered it this year!

Nevertheless, I may have the chance to meet Brooke Hodge in the next week or so. Fingers crossed.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

fashion and architecture... my two favorite things. this exhibit was so cool to walk through that i had to buy the book.