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A Cultural History of Western Fashion: From Haute Couture to Virtual Couture
Just as the clothes we wear can communicate our personality and how we want to be perceived, so fashion can reflect the politics and preoccupations of the society that produced it.
A Cultural History of Western Fashion guides you through the relationships between haute couture and ready-to-wear designer fashions, popular culture, big business, high-tech production, as well as traditional and social media. Exploring fashion's interdisciplinary nature, English and Munroe also highlight the parallel evolution of clothing design and the other visual arts over the last 150 years.
This new edition includes expanded coverage of the build up to the First World War and brings this classic text up to date. There is also a new chapter on smart textiles and technology, exploring the work of Hussein Chalayan and Iris Van Herpen among others, and expanded coverage of the role of sustainability in the contemporary fashion industry, including biosynthetic textile production and Stella McCartney's use of vegan leather.
A Cultural History of Western Fashion guides you through the relationships between haute couture and ready-to-wear designer fashions, popular culture, big business, high-tech production, as well as traditional and social media. Exploring fashion's interdisciplinary nature, English and Munroe also highlight the parallel evolution of clothing design and the other visual arts over the last 150 years.
This new edition includes expanded coverage of the build up to the First World War and brings this classic text up to date. There is also a new chapter on smart textiles and technology, exploring the work of Hussein Chalayan and Iris Van Herpen among others, and expanded coverage of the role of sustainability in the contemporary fashion industry, including biosynthetic textile production and Stella McCartney's use of vegan leather.
- GenresFashion
296 pages, Hardcover
Published April 28, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 8, 2024
A solid and instructive history of fashion marred by the ideological intrusions of both authors.
Bonnie English provides a robust history of fashion throughout the modern era, the chapters covering the years of 1870 to 2010 are the best, with only a few curious omissions worth noting.
Firstly, despite a lively description of the other designers activity during the period of world war two, Chanal simply 'faces difficulties' (if you do not know her history here she was a nazi spy and collaborator). Likewise, when it comes to the event of McQueen's death he simply 'passed away' neatly ignoring the fact of his suicide. I can only assume the author had a reflex to protect the image of the industry, but frankly, it is bad history to leave these details out.
Despite these omissions I have some respect for English's methodology and approach and find her history largely sound and worth reading.
This changes with her death in 2013. And history around and after this point is written by Nazanin Hedayat Munroe who fills her chapters on sustainability and digitisation with irrelevant bloated ramblings about tech start ups and vague optimistic assertions that are contradicted against the data presented.
You cannot tell me in one line that the garment industry is the second largest global polluter and that less than one percent of it is recycled and then state:
"Fashion, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, finally found its consciousness, and its designers, models and business entrepreneurs alike have joined global musicians to attempt to make the world a better place."
In the world of prevailing double meanings that fashion contains, how is this in any way true just because a tech start up floating on silicone valley investment capital creates a leather out of fungus? The description, later on, of the strategy of green washing (ostensibly what the book is doing) is also suspiciously insufficient.
The digitisation section is likewise naive and unexamined. The growing public theatre of haute couture on the internet is one of the great stories in fashion in the 21st century, and yet the chapter focuses its attention on tech industry scams such as VR and AR, whose application has found no great use to fashion outside of the speculation bubble Munroe eagerly inflates.
Despite this ideological optimism, Munroe at least provides an entertaining recounting of the history technology in fashion and presents the facts on the scale of the environmental cost of fashion in honest terms.
Interestingly, by examining the subtle sublimated interests of both academics, a portrait of the shift in ideology can also be detected. From the function of English's conservative 'omissions' to Munroe's flood of utopic, but fundamentally empty, idealism. One must assume these tendencies serve the same function; to protect the industry they study, regardless of human or environmental cost.
Overall, with the right lens on, one can derive good value from this text. But be weary of what is being said between the lines, as with fashion, much remains in the inference of power.
Bonnie English provides a robust history of fashion throughout the modern era, the chapters covering the years of 1870 to 2010 are the best, with only a few curious omissions worth noting.
Firstly, despite a lively description of the other designers activity during the period of world war two, Chanal simply 'faces difficulties' (if you do not know her history here she was a nazi spy and collaborator). Likewise, when it comes to the event of McQueen's death he simply 'passed away' neatly ignoring the fact of his suicide. I can only assume the author had a reflex to protect the image of the industry, but frankly, it is bad history to leave these details out.
Despite these omissions I have some respect for English's methodology and approach and find her history largely sound and worth reading.
This changes with her death in 2013. And history around and after this point is written by Nazanin Hedayat Munroe who fills her chapters on sustainability and digitisation with irrelevant bloated ramblings about tech start ups and vague optimistic assertions that are contradicted against the data presented.
You cannot tell me in one line that the garment industry is the second largest global polluter and that less than one percent of it is recycled and then state:
"Fashion, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, finally found its consciousness, and its designers, models and business entrepreneurs alike have joined global musicians to attempt to make the world a better place."
In the world of prevailing double meanings that fashion contains, how is this in any way true just because a tech start up floating on silicone valley investment capital creates a leather out of fungus? The description, later on, of the strategy of green washing (ostensibly what the book is doing) is also suspiciously insufficient.
The digitisation section is likewise naive and unexamined. The growing public theatre of haute couture on the internet is one of the great stories in fashion in the 21st century, and yet the chapter focuses its attention on tech industry scams such as VR and AR, whose application has found no great use to fashion outside of the speculation bubble Munroe eagerly inflates.
Despite this ideological optimism, Munroe at least provides an entertaining recounting of the history technology in fashion and presents the facts on the scale of the environmental cost of fashion in honest terms.
Interestingly, by examining the subtle sublimated interests of both academics, a portrait of the shift in ideology can also be detected. From the function of English's conservative 'omissions' to Munroe's flood of utopic, but fundamentally empty, idealism. One must assume these tendencies serve the same function; to protect the industry they study, regardless of human or environmental cost.
Overall, with the right lens on, one can derive good value from this text. But be weary of what is being said between the lines, as with fashion, much remains in the inference of power.
October 31, 2022
This excellent book contextualizes the history of fashion in great detail. It would make a fine textbook.. I found the later chapters particularity
interesting.
interesting.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews