Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival and the Grotesque Body

by Francesca Granata

Shortlisted for the Costume Society of America Millia Davenport Publication Award Experimental Fashion traces the proliferation of the grotesque and carnivalesque within contemporary fashion and the close relation between fashion and performance art, from Lady Gaga's raw meat dress to Leigh Bowery's performance style. Francesca Granata examines the designers and performance artists at the turn of the twenty-first century whose work challenges established codes of what represents the fashionable body. These innovative people, she argues, make their challenges through dynamic strategies of parody, humor, and inversion. Experimental Fashion explores the experimental work of modern designers, such as Georgina Godley, Bernhard Willhelm, Rei Kawakubo, and fashion designer, performance artist, and club figure, Leigh Bowery. It also discusses the increased centrality of experimental fashion through the pop phenomenon, Lady Gaga.

Genres: Fashion, Nonfiction, Art

256 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2017

Reviews

[Skyli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horror and humor. The intersections of fashion and performance (fashion as performance!) are such ripe places to explore and this book is a great introduction to this. I enjoy the variety of disciplines Granata pulls from as well as the range of designers and figures she discusses, like Leigh Bowery and Lady Gaga as a sort of mainstream continuation of the grotesque in the realm of style. I do wish there were more pictures of specific garments she mentions

[R · Rating 5 out of 5]

First nonfiction on fashion yay!!! Long awaited. This was supercool and added to my cultural understanding of fashion and art similar to my art class in Milan. It was fun to use these thoughts to shape my understanding of exhibits when I was in the city. Super interesting conceptual understanding of dressing and grotesque.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

skoda ze ta lady gaga kapitola nebyla delsi