Seeing Through Clothes

by Anne Hollander

In this generously illustrated book, Anne Hollander examines the representation of the body and clothing in Western art, from Greek sculpture and vase painting through medieval and renaissance portraits, to contemporary films and fashion photography. First published ahead of its time, this book has become a classic.

Genres: Fashion, Nonfiction, Art, History, Art History, Fashion History, Sociology

504 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Anne Helen Loesser Hollander was an American historian whose original work provided new insights into the history of fashion and costume and their relation to the history of art. She published numerous books on the history of fashion, modernity, and the body including Seeing Through Clothes and Sex and Suits.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seeing Through Clothes was unable to answer this burning question I've had for awhile: What the heck is going on with this dress? Why does it look as if its wearer had just unfolded it from a square?


John Everett Millais, The Black Brunswicker, 1860

As interested as I am in both representational art and fashion, Hollander's book failed to keep me engaged. It does have many black and white plates, which is good - there are very few pages which go unillustrated. But particularly in the first couple chapters, titled Drapery and Nudity, I got the odd sensation that Hollander wasn't a serious academic art historian. (It didn't help that her tiny bio blurb on the back cover doesn't say where she works or teaches. Does she teach? No idea.) I can't quite put my finger on why; maybe these chapters could have been better organized, within themselves and within the book overall. There was quite a bit of repetition throughout the book. When she begins writing about costumes and theatricality, in the fourth chapter, you get the sense she's more of an expert, more in her wheelhouse. It's hard not to think that her expertise isn't so much the art history of painting and sculpture, as costumes, theater sets, and movies.

Some of her slightly odd examples contributed to this feeling. She refers to "Courbet's convincingly smelly-looking women" (p. 131) - and references this gal:


Gustave Courbet, The Source, 1868, Musée d'Orsay

Why would I think that woman smells bad? Merely because she has a very big caboose? Does a big butt = stinky? If anything, she probably smells less bad than your average woman on the street in 1868, because she's rinsing off under a waterfall.

She tells us that "the hairlessness of Bronzino's dirty Venus, together with her hipless contours, has vague connotations of a smooth eleven-year-old prostitute skilled in vile practices." (p. 146) This is the dirty Venus she's referring to:


Bronzino, Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, c. 1540, National Gallery, London

Does that look like an eleven-year-old prostitute to you? She also uses Bronzino's Venus as an example of the disappearance of the well-defined waistline, producing women who "resemble long, lumpy sausages..." (p. 100) Again, that wouldn't be the first analogy that comes to mind when I look at Bronzino's Venus. And sausages usually aren't lumpy, they're usually very smooth.

Examining Hans Memling's Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian,



she finds that the saint's "torturers are very near him, like prospective rapists pretending to be archers." (p. 183) Really? Rapists?

One of her most important points is that nude images, in addition to being "based on the "natural" pictorial ideal of the moment," are "dependent on the dressed image from which the clothes are missing." Thus Goya's The Nude Maja with her "high, widely separated breasts and rigid spine"..."seems to show the effects of corseting without the corset":


Francisco Goya, The Nude Maja, Prado Museum

The last chapter, somewhat oddly titled Mirrors, contains an interesting digression on descriptions or lack thereof of clothing in literature, with a look at Austen, Eliot, Louisa May Alcott, Coleridge, the Brontës, Flaubert, Stendhal, and Balzac.

The captioning of her illustrations is disruptively inconsistent. Some have the date of the artwork, but many don't. The same goes for the "Sources for Illustrations" at the end of the book - artist, title, and location are specified, but the date of the work only rarely.

[Dmitry · Rating 3 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Эту книгу я читал год или даже чуть больше года. Что можно сказать спустя год? Не очень много. Тут нужно сразу отметить, что я читал книгу год не потому, что книга была скучной, а потому, что книга по своим размерам огромна. Не знаю, как выглядит англоязычная версия, но российский вариант представляет собой нестандартный (большой) формат, а текст набран довольно мелким шрифтом. Плюс к этому, несмотря на заявленную тему, иллюстраций в книге не так чтобы много. Да, они есть, но хотелось бы больше.

Итак, эту книгу можно посоветовать ну очень большим поклонникам темы дизайна одежды и лишь относительно – поклонникам искусства. Автор хоть и ссылается в своей книге на множество различных картин, но книга всё же больше об одежде, нежели об искусстве. Если точнее, я бы дал такую пропорцию:65/35. В принципе, я могу понять, почему книгу рекомендуют к прочтению студентам факультетов искусствоведения. Действительно, автор анализирует искусство и дизайн одежды довольно глубоко, но эта глубина анализа будет интересна только тем читателям, кому интересны темы искусства и дизайна одежды. Я хочу сказать, что книга написана так, что про неё нельзя сказать, что она ориентирована на широкую аудиторию. Скорее, книга ориентирована на студентов соответствующих факультетов и/или на людей, серьёзно интересующихся темой моды и искусства прошлых эпох. Я настолько долго останавливаюсь на этом факте, т.к. в российском издании книга вышла в серии «Теория моды», что подразумевает, что книгу будут читать непрофессионалы, ибо множество книг этой серии были написаны довольно доступно, т.е. понятно широкой аудитории, за исключением нескольких книг. И к этим нескольким я отношу и книги Энн Холландер.

Мне кажется, правильней было бы разделить эту книгу на две или даже три книги, ибо все главы этой книги, коих их тут шесть, очень слабо связанны между собой. Для себя я нашёл интересными только первые главы, которые непосредственным образом связаны с искусством, т.е. в них больше про искусство, нежели дизайн одежды. А вот остальные главы, они менее интересные (лично для меня) и довольно сумбурно написаны, особенно последние две (Одежда, Зеркала). Возможно, падение моего интереса к ним связано с тем, что перед этими двумя главами была глава под названием «Сценический костюм» и вот эта глава высушила мой интерес полностью ибо, где я и где театральный костюм. Я вообще не являюсь большим поклонником театра, а уж театрального костюма, т.е. подробнейшего анализа театрального костюма в 17 веке и подавно. Учитывая, что автор пишет довольно сложно, эта глава сделала многое, чтобы снизить мой интерес к этой и так сильно затянувшейся книге. Получается что первые три главы, которые рассказываю об отображении одежды в искусстве, я оценил бы на 5 баллов, но остальные три, заслуживают оценки не выше 2. Именно поэтому я и написал, что эту книгу определённо стоило разделить хотя бы на две части (т.е. книги). Что касается последних двух глав, которые никак не связаны с театральным костюмом, то причина негативной оценки конкретно по ним связано с нечёткостью идеи или идей, которые автор попыталась донести до меня с помощью этих последних двух глав. У меня возникло ощущение, что последние главы довольно слабы в плане анализа. Да, я понял идею про зеркало, но именно на последней главе, которая посвящена зеркалам в искусстве, я вдруг понял, что автор невероятно словоохотлив, т.е. автор ходит вокруг да около, как будто с целью подольше не заканчивать (писать) книгу. Я думаю именно поэтому я бросил чтение не дочитав последние 30 страниц. Хотя тема зеркал и интересна, но автор на последних двух главах настолько увеличил количество пустых слов и предложений, настолько скучно стала описывать идеи, которые она пыталась донести до читателя, что я просто выдохся.

Итак, что же мы имеем в итоге? Огромную и довольно спорную книгу адресованную студентам или людям интересующимся темой моды и/или европейского искусства, в которой первые три главы написаны довольно интересно, а вот последние три главы рассчитаны на ещё более узкую аудиторию.

Я хотел бы отметить интересное замечание автора по поводу искусства, что люди прошлого не воспринимали обнажённую натуру на холсте в качестве эротики, но если на картине появлялась одежда, то в туже секунду картина становилась эротической. Интересно наблюдение автора, что не обнажённая грудь триггерила эротизм, а некий другой, совсем бытовой фактор (объект). Это вполне логично, особенно если вспомнить обнажённую грудь Мадонны на множестве картин европейских художников. К сожалению, автор этой книги не из тех, кто способен донести интересные идеи хотя бы относительно кратко и просто. Я повторю: текст книги довольно тяжёлый. Вкупе со специфичностью выбранных тем, книга становится ярким представителем литературы ориентированной на довольно узкую аудиторию.

It is a book I've been reading for a year or even a little over a year. What can be said after a year? Not very much. It should be noted that I read the book for a year not because the book was boring, but because the book is huge. I don't know what the English version looks like, but the Russian version is a non-standard (large) format, and the text is typed in a small font. Plus, despite the stated theme, there are not many illustrations in the book. Yes, there are illustrations, but I would have liked more.

So, this book can be recommended to very big fans of fashion design and only relatively to fans of art. Although the author refers, in her book, to many different paintings, the book is still more about clothes than about art. To be more precise, I would give this proportion:65/35. In principle, I can understand why the book is recommended for students of art history. Indeed, the author analyzes the art and design of clothing quite deeply but this depth of analysis will be of interest only to those readers who are interested in the topics of art and clothing design. I want to say that the book is written in such a way that it cannot be said that it is aimed at a general audience. Rather, the book is aimed at students of relevant faculties and/or people who are seriously interested in fashion and art of past eras. I dwell so long on this fact because, in the Russian edition, the book was published in the series "Theory of Fashion", which implies that the book will be read by non-professionals. After all, many books of this series were written quite accessible, i.e., understandable to a wide audience, except for a few books. And to these few, I include Anne Hollander's books.

I think it would have been better to divide this book into two or even three books because all the chapters (of this book), of which there are six, are very loosely connected. For me, I found interesting only the first chapters, which are directly related to art, i.e., they are more about art than clothing design. But the rest of the chapters are less interesting (for me) and rambling, especially the last two (Clothes, Mirrors). Perhaps the drop in my interest (in them) is because before these two chapters, there was a chapter called "Stage Costume" and this chapter dried up my interest completely, for where am I and where is the theatrical costume? I am not a big fan of the theater at all, and certainly not of theatrical costume, i.e., a detailed analysis of theatrical costume in the 17th century. Considering the author's writing is quite complex, this chapter did much to diminish my interest in this already highly dragged-out book. It turns out that the first three chapters, which talk about the representation of clothing in art, I would rate at 5 points, but the other three deserve a score no higher than 2. That's why I wrote that this book should definitely have been divided into at least two parts (i.e., books). As for the last two chapters, which have nothing to do with theatrical costume, the reason for the negative rating specifically on them is due to the vagueness of the idea or ideas that the author tried to convey to me with these last two chapters. I got the feeling that the last few chapters were pretty weak in terms of analysis. Yes, I understood the idea of the mirror, but it was in the last chapter, which is devoted to mirrors in art, that I suddenly realized that the author is incredibly wordy, i.e., the author goes around and around, as if with the purpose of not finishing (writing) the book longer. I think that's why I quit reading without finishing the last 30 pages. Although the topic of mirrors is interesting, the author, in the last two chapters, so increased the number of empty words and sentences, so boring began to describe the ideas she was trying to convey to the reader, that I just ran out of steam.

So, what do we have in the end? A huge and rather controversial book addressed to students or people interested in fashion and/or European art, in which the first three chapters are quite interesting, but the last three chapters are addressed to an even more narrow audience.

I would like to note the author's interesting observation about art, that people of the past did not perceive nudity on canvas as eroticism, but if clothes appeared on the picture, the picture became erotic at the same second. It is interesting the author's observation that it was not the naked breast that triggered eroticism but some other, quite mundane factor (object). This is quite logical, especially if we recall the naked breasts of the Madonna in many paintings by European artists. Unfortunately, the author of this book is not one who can convey interesting ideas relatively briefly and simply. I will repeat: the text of the book is rather heavy. Together with the specificity of the chosen topics, the book becomes a vivid representative of literature aimed at a narrow audience.

[Liss Carmody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up thinking it would be an interesting study of the history of fashion as shown in art, demonstrating how the way the nude body is painted at different times suggests and implies the clothing and fashions in body type that were popular at that time. While it did indeed discuss that (and fascinatingly so), this book is about much more. It blends the disciplines of fashion study and art history meticulously, and where I am not well versed in art history, much of the ground covered here was innovative to me. Many elements I wouldn't have thought of were touched on, such as the use of drapery in painting and sculpture over time, the use of mirrors in art, descriptions of fashionable clothing in literature (a surprisingly uncommon phenomenon), modern fashion and photography, and more.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually rather dislike this book, but it is canon in my non-existant field. It is very structuralist makes a lot of painfully obvious observations, like that clothing affects the way we see the body. I'm trying to remember that it was first written in 1978 when that was indeed a novel observation. When I force myself to read past the banality and the unfair assumptions Hollander makes, I find she actually occasionally says something insightful when she's discussing individual works of art.

[Tristy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the most thorough history of clothing and the human form in art and history that I have ever seen. The pictures included in the book are wonderful, but it's really just not a subject that moves me, at all. Don't get me wrong, I love clothes, but so much of the history relied here is really how the male gaze has draped the female form and that bums me out. I do understand why it is a must-read for anyone studying fashion design.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stunningly easy read through the Western canon I otherwise cringe to approach.

[Karen Mathis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing history book on clothing. Think art history book but on clothing. I love it and refer to it often.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Hollander’s major study of clothing, specifically in art, only picks up steam as it goes along.

The first three sections, “Drapery,” “Nudity,” “Undress” are skilled investigations into under-discussed topics in art history — and they employ detailed readings of many different artworks, charting a detailed and immediately convincing case, but these have a certain level of myopicness done away with by the more expansive scope of sections IV (“Costume”), V (“Dress”), and VI (“Mirror”). Anne Hollander is especially talented, in these later chapters, at balancing between close-readings and more imaginative philosophical meditations about the nature of clothing in general. Readers have been prepared for this broadening in scope, no doubt, by the careful crash course conducted earlier, and the payoff is absolutely titillating.

[MB (What she read)]

Painted nudes in art as reflection of what women of the era were wearing clothes-wise...hmmm. Interesting idea.

[Alic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for essay writing

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because it was hailed in Bookforum as being a masterful study of clothes through time. I found it far less than masterful, but still interesting/useful in some parts. The organization of the book was never intuitive, and became grating: chapters were broken into one-word phrases: "drapery," "nudity," "undress," "costume," "dress," and "mirrors." I probably wouldn't have ever forced myself to finish it, except that I'm giving a talk on campus this week on women's fashion through time for "Love Your Body" week. For this and other interests, I found pieces of "Nudity" and "Undress" quite useful. Hollander's discussion of the differing perceptions of beauty in the female body through works of art was especially good. But she often wandered, and there's no real conscept-building or flow to the book--centuries jumped, any escaping thought acceptable at any time. Her smaller sub-chapters about various clothing forms (or lack thereof) will likely be useful for someone looking to focus on something more discrete.

Overall, the book did convince me all the more than in terms of women's body type ideals, we live in a very, very sick moment. And this moment is perhaps more recent than we realize. Although she didn't discuss women's bodily issues rampant in the Victorian age (widespread anorexia, etc), I liked Hollander's discussion of why 1920s dress was such a watershed--an odd one at that, wherein women gained more representative rights, more power in society in general, while at the same time the standard became to show more skin, wear less forming/bulky undergarments, and thus their bodies had to look naturally sculpted. (Ie, if you had bad legs or a lumpy ass, clothing in earlier ages would cover it up; in the 20s, the standard was to show the body--and it shouldn't have these flaws.) I would imagine that even though the corset was certainly a torture device for most women through the centuries, when it came off, we ended up requiring our bodies to look as if we had "natural" (if slightly less curvy and more athletic) corsets on anyway. Again, Hollander's book is interesting and useful, but could have been much moreso if some sense of historical development was offered, and perhaps key relationships like fashion to economic structure were explored.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hollander made a significant contribution to the field of Apparel Studies by linking Dress History with Art History, and I would recommend this book to serious dress historians. However, Seeing Through Clothes is dated and some of Hollander's claims are dubious or incorrect. For example, Hollander claims that people living in Greece during the Hellenistic period did not wear underwear, but she provides no evidence (and the lack of images of people wearing underwear does not necessarily indicate what was worn under chitons). Her book lacks any footnotes, which makes it very difficult to trace her sources. In addition, her arguments sometimes wander, so it is not always easy to follow her line of thought.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice prose. A collection of essays more than a really coherent single narrative, though. Well-chosen illustrations, though in this edition at least none of them are in color. Some of the topics covered included: draped clothing as a decorative motif since antiquity; clothes in books; clothing in erotica and the male gaze; mirrors; theatrical costumes; black as a perennial fashion statement; clothing in fiction. It didn't really tackle class issues and some of the author's statements concerning antiquity seemed speculative, but it is an interesting book if you're into fashion history.

[DJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when I first learned of it back in 1993. I've always been interested in visual communications, art history, clothing, fads and the like. This book was a really interesting look at clothing throughout the ages, how some fashions have shaped and re-shaped our bodies (think corsets - egads) and how socio-economic situations have shaped our clothing choices (WWII, Rosie the Riveter). This is another book that needed replacing after numerous people read and re-read it.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Art history and culture presented with a wry, readable tone. The first sections were the best, IMO, since there were a lot of illustrations of what was meant. An updated version would be published on a color tablet so that the reproductions could be seen better--I mean, they did the best they could in 1975, but some of the painting reproductions are really hard to see.

[jennifer]

Hollander offers a unique perspective on history and representation in art through the lense of fashion.

[Allison Thurman]

Library?

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masterful work on the role of clothes in art and how it reflects the cultures and mores of each period. Well researched and full of info. Loved it.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye-opening

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seminal/dated.

[Жанна Пояркова · Rating 3 out of 5]

Весьма необычный нонфикшн о роли тканей и одежды в живописи, во время чтения которого чувствуешь острый недостаток знаний в истории искусства.

[Badinia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting history/meditation on what clothes have meant through human history.

[Hong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Hollander is one of the well known historian... painting, clothes, arts, and society..