Glamour: Fashion, Industrial Design, Architecture

by Phil Patton, Virginia Postrel, Valerie Steele

As one of the most alluring yet elusive concepts in contemporary style, glamour is an ideal that permeates our visual culture. This lavishly illustrated book radically revises our understanding of glamour in fashion, industrial design, and architecture. The volume traces glamour’s trajectory from its historical middle-class origins to its present-day connotations of affluence and elegance. In doing so, “glamour” is established as a new critical category for design that embraces richly decorative patterns, complex layering, sumptuous materials, and sculptural forms.

Following a general introduction on the culture and consumption of glamour, three essays explore the concept as it has evolved in the fields of fashion, design, and architecture. Valerie Steele examines the construction of glamour from nineteenth-century fashion through the golden age of Hollywood and beyond, addressing the creations of Adrian, Christian Dior, Chanel, Gucci, and Versace, among others. Phil Patton discusses the industrial designs of Bentley, Jakob + MacFarlane, Marc Newson, Greg Lynn, and more, linking postwar culture’s fixation on consumer goods to the establishment of class identity and the intricacies of branding and marketing. Joseph Rosa identifies the roots of glamour in projects by postwar architects such as Philip Johnson and Paul Rudolph, exploring their influences on contemporary architects such as Herzog and de Meuron, Bernard Tschumi, and Neil Denari.

Presenting a diverse array of striking couture, design objects (from cars to watches), and buildings (both built and unbuilt), this beautiful book is essential for anyone interested in fashion, design, or architecture.

Genres: Fashion, Design

192 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 2004

About the author

Phil Patton is a contributing editor at Departures, Esquire, and I.D., a contributing writer at Wired and an automotive design writer for The New York Times. Phil was a regular contributor to The New York Times Home and Garden section and, in 1998, originated the "Public Eye" column. He has written many books including: Made in USA: The Secret Histories of the Things That Made America (Grove-Weidenfeld, 1992), which was named a New York Times notable book of the year; Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile (Simon & Schuster, 2002); Michael Graves Designs: The Art of the Everyday Object (Melcher, 2004); and Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51 (Villard, 1998). He has also written for Art in America, ARTnews, Connoisseur, Geo, Harper's Bazaar, Men's Journal, The New Republic, New York Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Travel + Leisure, Traveler, The Village Voice and Vogue. Phil was the Editorial Consultant on the Guggenheim Museum's "Motorcycle" show in 1998 and Consulting Curator for the "Different Roads" exhibition at MoMA in 1999. In 2000 he was consultant and contributor for "On the Job: Design and the American Office" at the National Building Museum in Washington.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote an article about this exhibition many years ago. I don't remember the name of the curator, but he was quite dynamic and I remember being impressed.