Fashion, Desire and Anxiety: Image and Morality in the Twentieth Century

by Rebecca Arnold

Fashion, and the glossy magazines it inhabits, allow Western culture to dream. It permits a person to fantasize and to experiment with new identities. It flaunts glamour and success. Appearance becomes something to be perfected and admired. These dreams and freedoms, Rebecca Arnold proposes, are contradictory. Fashion and its surrounding imagery elicit fear and anxiety in their consumers as well as pleasure. Fashion has come to incorporate the underside of modern life, with violence and decay becoming a dominant theme in clothing design and photography. Arnold draws on diverse written sources to explore the complex nature of modern fashion. She discusses a range of key how fashion uses and abuses the power of wealth; the alienating promotion of "good" taste; the power plays of sex and display; and how identities can be blurred to disguise and confuse. In order to unravel the contradictory emotions of desire and anxiety they provoke, she never loses sight of the historical and cultural contexts in which fashion designers and photographers perform. Generously illustrated, Fashion, Desire and Anxiety focuses on the last thirty years, from photographic works of the 1970s to the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Genres: Fashion, Nonfiction, Theory, Design, History

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Carla Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always read about fashion and been interested in the history of it. But as I've ... matured ... I'm more into cultural shifts, economics and time. So this was a great book for me. ... In the early 1970s, Yves Saint Laurent presented a collection based on WWII, and it was controversial. The younger people (those born after the war) loved it, but older folk who'd been through this time, were horrified. These differences in perception based on age fascinate me. And now I know you can live through 25 years and still feel the same, it changes everything.

[Dmitry · Rating 2 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Очень сложно мне что-то сказать по поводу этой книги, так как книга довольно сложно и мутно написана. В том смысле, что автор как будто намеренно прятала свои умозаключения за огромным нагромождением бессмысленных и ненужных слов и предложений. То ли автор таким способом хотела предстать пред глазами читателей в виде эксперта в теме современной моды, то ли автора пугала перспектива быть понятым на все 100%. Сложные словесные конструкции, которыми полна книга, призваны сформировать имидж автора, нежели донести авторские идеи до читательской аудитории. Так как я часто встречаюсь с подобной привычкой авторов всё усложнять, я всегда считал и продолжаю считать такие действия с их стороны попыткой увеличить объём книги, когда сказать-то больше и нечего или когда ценных мыслей изначально очень и очень мало.

Ещё одним минусом книги является то, что иллюстраций в книге практически нет, в то время как автор постоянно ссылается то на фотосессии, то на показы мод. Исходя из того, что главной ценность являются выводы, которые делает автор, основываясь при этом на показах модных коллекций и фотоссесиях, приходится только сожалеть, что в книгу было добавлено такое ничтожное количество фотографий. Ведь как по-другому ещё оценить предложенные автором идеи? А предлагает автор довольно радикальный подход к пониманию современной моды, а точнее, моды конца XX века.

Практически все высказывания автора носят довольно не ординальный характер. Именно поэтому так важно было добавить больше фотографий. Конечно, можно посмотреть их в Интернете, но книга не настолько увлекла меня, чтобы я тратил время ещё и на поиски фотографий. Поэтому я не знаю, можно ли найти в Интернете примеры фотоссесий, на которые ссылается автор. Поэтому что если и в Интернет их нет, то ценность книги снижается в разы. Я не беру людей, хорошо разбирающихся в моде. Возможно, они знают, о чём пишет автор и возможно они подтвердят то, что автор основывается именно на тех тенденциях, что происходили в то время. Я же скорее говорю как дилетант, для которого все эти умозаключения автора были лишь её частным мнением, трактовкой. Вот эта идея, т.е. что я читаю лишь трактовку моды, т.е. то, как видит дух моды автор, меня не покидало до самого конца книги. Да, возможно она права. Но возможно, это лишь её субъективное мнение, пусть даже по некоторым вопросам она совпала с доминирующим мнением. К примеру, в книге обсуждается смысл появления таких модных явлений как одежда гангстеров, скинхедов, панков, явление под названием «героиновый шик». Эти обзоры, о причинах появления данных модных течений, с одной стороны интересны, но с другой, очень коротки, а с третьей, очень субъективны. Т.е. возможно всё так и есть, как показывает это автор, но возможно, причины были совсем другими. Шокировать общество? Возможно. Но возможно там есть что-то ещё. И в любом случаи, у меня возникло ощущение, что в объект внимания автора попала очень небольшая группа этих людей. Хотя, я могу ошибаться.

Что касается размышлений на тему женского тела в контексте моды конца XX века, т.е. предпоследняя глава книги, то эта глава/тема показалась мне самой неоднозначной. Именно об этом я написал выше. Может всё так, а может, совсем по-другому. Так же стоит упомянуть, что именно в этой части наиболее отчётливо слышен отзвук современного феминизма. Однако, учитывая, что книга написана довольно мутно, то и отзвук феминизма в этой книге звучит очень тихо или приглушённо. Некоторые моменты я узнавал только благодаря тому, что уже слышал об этом из других источников и более ясно и полно. С одной стороны, благодаря этому книга не впадает в радикализм, который свойственен современному феминизму, а с другой, многие читатели могут посчитать, что автор не решается заявить свою позицию ясней и громче. В любом случаи, мутность книги и тут сыграла свою роль. И опять же, я не знаю, насколько выводы автора релевантны. Всё же мода не ограничивается несколькими фотосессиями и парой показов мод. Об этом нужно помнить не только читая данную главу книги, но и всё книгу целиком.

It is very difficult for me to say anything about this book, as the book is rather complicated and vaguely written, in the sense that the author deliberately hid her conclusions behind a huge pile of meaningless and unnecessary words and sentences. Whether the author in this way wanted to appear before the eyes of the readers as an expert in the topic of contemporary fashion, or the author was afraid of the prospect of being 100% understood. The complex verbal constructions with which the book is full, are intended to form the image of the author, rather than to convey the author's ideas to the readership. Since I often encounter this habit of authors to complicate things, I have always considered and continue to consider such actions on their part as an attempt to increase the volume of the book, when there is nothing more to say or when there are initially very few valuable ideas.

Another disadvantage of the book is that there are practically no illustrations in the book, while the author constantly refers to photoshoots and fashion shows. Since the main value is the conclusions made by the author, based on the fashion shows and photoshoots, we can only regret that so few pictures have been added to the book. After all, how else to assess the ideas suggested by the author? And the author offers quite a radical approach to the understanding of contemporary fashion, or, more precisely, the fashion of the late 20th century.

Almost all of the author's statements are quite unusual in nature. That's why it was so important to add more pictures. Of course, you can look them up on the Internet, but the book didn't fascinate me enough to waste my time looking for pictures as well. So I don't know if it's possible to find examples of the photoshoots the author refers to on the Internet. So if they are not on the Internet either, then the value of the book is reduced many times over. I don't take people who are well versed in fashion. Perhaps they know what the author writes about, and perhaps they will confirm that the author is based exactly on the trends that were going on at the time. I rather speak as a layman, for whom all these conclusions of the author were only her private opinion, an interpretation. This idea, i.e., that I am only reading the interpretation of fashion, i.e., how the author sees the spirit of fashion, did not leave me until the very end of the book. Yes, maybe she's right. But perhaps this is only her subjective opinion, even though on some issues she coincided with the dominant opinion. For example, the book discusses the meaning of the emergence of such fashion phenomena as the clothing of gangsters, skinheads, punks, the phenomenon called "heroin chic". These reviews, about the reasons for the emergence of these fashion trends, are, on the one hand, interesting, but on the other hand, very short, and on the third, very subjective. That is, perhaps everything is as the author shows it, but perhaps the reasons were quite different. To shock society? Perhaps. But maybe there's more to it than that. And in any case, I got the feeling that a very small group of these people were the subject of the author's attention. I could be wrong, though.

As for reflections on the female body in the context of late 20th-century fashion, i.e., the penultimate chapter of the book, I found this chapter/topic to be the most ambiguous. Maybe it's like that, or maybe, it's completely different. It's also worth mentioning that this is the part where the echoes of modern feminism are most clearly heard. However, given that the book is written rather murkily, the echoes of feminism in this book are also very quiet or muted. Some points I learned because I had already heard about it from other sources and more clearly and fully. On the one hand, this ensures that the book does not fall into the radicalism that is characteristic of modern feminism, but on the other hand, many readers may feel that the author is hesitant to make her position clearer and louder. Either way, the murkiness of the book played a role here as well. Again, I don't know how relevant the author's conclusions are. After all, fashion is not limited to a few photoshoots and a couple of fashion shows.

[gathoni]

Has many interesting ideas, theories and histories of how fashion in the West has evolved in relation to b0dies and what society deems appealing and the compromises made to accommodate its alternatives, extremes and even appropriation. I was mostly fascinated by the eras in which women took over a style or trend and made it their own, and what they rejected.

For example:

The Aids scare increased fears of death and disease...the rigorously exercised body displayed by revealing fashions was as much a protective shield, a perfected exterior, which acted as a fetish to ward off anxieties surrounding death and disease...

Themes of anxiety and distress continued to be combined with a latent sexuality in his (McQueen's) work. In ‘The Hunger’ of spring/summer 1996, models were clad in attenuated suiting, which crept back from their bodies to expose clear moulded bodices with worm-like contortions.

For me, McQ's show brought to mind Beatrice Wanjiku’s 2021 The Primal and Unutterable II paintings. A cavity-like form set against a rich red and orangey background, with exp0sed ribs and swirls of bl0od evoking the human interior.


I have openly documented my support for cosmetic procedures, both light and intense. Reading this was interesting:

Plastic surgery has been marketed as the ultimate freedom to defy the limitations of the prosaic natural body, and literally create your own image, albeit by evoking the ideals of fashion and media bodies. The possibility that you can alter your physical being, freed from the moral dictates of religious belief in the sanctity of God’s creations, has stretched out from the fashion pages, where such extreme ways of changing appearance have been accepted for half a century.

Another passage that I liked:

Punk deliberately sought to cloud the meaning of clothing; the multiple references brought together in one outfit confused and challenged the onlooker, precluding a simple interpretation. The punk body was clothed in brutal pornographic styles ripped from the seedy environs of male-dominated Soho sex shops and flaunted in a bold statement of the power of the city street as an arena for the disenfranchised to express their revolt.
Fetish-wear – latex mini-skirts, bondage buckles and zips, fishnet stockings and patent stilettos – was used as a call to arms by young women. They were not adopting these styles to be viewed as available or submissive – the traditional interpretation of such explicitly sexual attire – but to challenge the soft sentimentality usually assigned to female teenagers, who were expected to dream of romance rather than project hard-core eroticism.

Appreciated the Anne Demeulemeester runway pic showing what androgyny looked like in 1995. In 1993, McQueen designed the bumster trousers that showed stomach, midriff and below the hip bones, and other designers raised the waistline back up.
The body to carry this needed to be much younger. Kids whose curves hadn't come in yet. Or just smaller with no features.
Katie Ford of Ford Models Inc., in New York said in 1998,

‘A lot of models are probably the youngest I can ever remember ... Designers are looking for a very young look now. They want girls with a very straight shape – you don’t have that in your 20s.’

This is a gem of a book!

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

jak lip zacit kapitolu nez rupaul quotem

[Aylin · Rating 4 out of 5]

page 4
"As shifting employment patterns, widespread joblessness, and ever-expanding cities have alienated people from more traditional notions of status linked to their work and environment, consumption acts as the salve for this lack, driving the economy, yet seeming to assuage the inequalities it enforces. Members of the upper classes fought to maintain status by asserting their superior taste and financial strength, through the elitism of couture. However, the escalating power of images has meant that previously excluded groups now seek to create ‘imagined’ status for themselves through the construction of styles which mark out their own territory, immune to the taunts from their supposed betters. This process of pressing against social constraints by snubbing the social etiquette of taste through visually defiant style and fantasy freedoms provided by fashion imagery, has enabled women to confront and subvert the trivial status allotted them. It has also allowed other groups pushed to the margins to revolt, from gay men to black teenagers, all seeking to channel the power of consumption towards their own ends, to escape the alienation of contemporary existence."
I mean... this book is gold.