Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now

Describes top trends and designers of the past fifty years, including their social and cultural contexts

Arts & Photography

valerie-steele

Graphic Design

Yale University Press

The Corset: A Cultural History

The corset is probably the most controversial garment in the history of fashion. Although regarded as an essential element of fashionable dress from the Renaissance into the twentieth century, the corset was also frequently condemned as an instrument of torture and the cause of ill health. Why did women continue to don steel and whalebone corsets for four hundred years? And why did they finally stop? This lavishly illustrated book offers fascinating and often surprising answers to these questions. Valerie Steele, one of the world’s most respected fashion historians, explores the cultural history of the corset, demolishing myths about this notorious garment and revealing new information and perspectives on its changing significance over the centuries. Whereas most historians have framed the history of the corset in terms of oppression vs. liberation and fashion vs. health and comfort, Steele contends that women’s experiences of corsetry varied considerably and cannot be fully understood within these narrow frames. Drawing on extensive research in textual, visual, and materials sources, the author disproves the beliefs that the corset was dangerously unhealthy and was designed primarily for the oppression of women. Women persisted in wearing corsets―despite powerful male authorities trying to dissuade them―because corsetry had positive connotations of social status, self-discipline, youth, and beauty. In the twentieth century the garment itself fell out of fashion but, Steele points out, it has become internalized as women replace the boned corset with diet, exercise, and plastic surgery. The book concludes with insightful analyses of such recent developments as the reconception of the corset as a symbol of rebellion and female sexual empowerment, the revival of the corset in contemporary high fashion, and its transformation from an item of underwear to outerwear.

Italian fashion - which encompasses designers and companies from Armani to Zegna - has become a dominant force in the fashion world. This stunning book discusses the rise of Italian fashion since 1945, the development of the Italian Look from the late 1970s to the present, and the many great designers who have contributed to Italy's fashion triumphs. This book is the catalogue for an exhibition, sponsored by the Italian Trade Commission, at The Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City from February 11, 2003 through April 12, 2003.

Fashion, Italian Style

Decorative Arts & Design

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.

Glamour: Fashion, Industrial Design, Architecture

Phil Patton

Virginia Postrel

The first full-scale study of one of America’s greatest contemporary fashion designers Working quietly and without much public attention for more than 20 years, American fashion designer Ralph Rucci suddenly became a headline topic in 2002, when he was invited to show his collection at the haute couture in Paris—the first American to receive such an invitation since Mainbocher in the 1930s. This sumptuously illustrated book is the first to explore in depth Rucci’s life and work, including the inspirations behind the extraordinarily beautiful and very expensive clothes he creates. The contributors to the volume explore many aspects of Rucci’s genius and emergence as a master in the fashion world. Valerie Steele places his life and work in the context of modern fashion history and discusses his connections with such figures as Balenciaga and Halston. Patricia Mears closely examines the garments he designs, reveals what makes them so special, and considers influences on his work. Clare Sauro describes Rucci’s accessories, which complete the aesthetic vision that his fashions embody. The book is enriched with more than 100 photographs that include runway images, fashion shots of Rucci’s clients, Chado Ralph Rucci garments from the collection of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology and from his own archives, as well as various inspirational objects and fashions.

Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness

Patricia Mears

Clare Sauro

Individual Artists

From its origins in the eighteenth-century literature of terror to its contemporary manifestations in vampire fiction, cinema, and art, the gothic has embraced the powers of horror and the erotic macabre. Gothic” is an epithet with a strange history evoking images of death, destruction, and decay. Ironically, its negative connotations have made the gothic an ideal symbol of rebellion for a wide range of cultural outsiders.
Popularly associated with black-clad teenagers and rock musicians, gothic fashion encompasses not only subcultural styles (from old-school goth to cyber-goth and beyond) but also high fashion by such designers as Alexander McQueen, John Galliano of Christian Dior, Rick Owens, Olivier Theyskens, and Yohji Yamamoto. Fashion photographers, such as Sean Ellis and Eugenio Recuenco, have also drawn on the visual vocabulary of the gothic to convey narratives of dark glamour. As the text and lavish illustrations in this book suggest, gothic fashion has deep cultural roots that give it an enduring potency.

Gothic: Dark Glamour

Jennifer Park

History & Criticism

One of the most exciting fashion designers in the United States, Cuban-born Isabel Toledo has been honored with a National Design Award from the Cooper- Hewitt Museum and a Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion, given by The Museum at FIT. Yet her name and work are recognized only by fashion insiders. This ravishing book brings Toledo’s creations to a wider audience, places them within the context of contemporary fashion, and examines her creative process.
Interviewing Toledo, her husband (fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo), and other colleagues, clients, and critics, Valerie Steele gives an account of Toledo’s career and explains that while she has been heralded by leading fashion magazines and featured in stores in New York and Europe, she has not had the long-term financial backing to break out of the niche market. Patricia Mears investigates the artistic and cultural influences on Toledo’s work and analyzes her unusual methods of construction, noting that she designs in three dimensions in her mind and then begins working directly with fabric. Displaying garments Toledo has created since her first show in 1985, this book is a revelatory exploration of a fashion innovator in a mass-market industry.

Isabel Toledo: Fashion from the Inside Out

**Volume 3 Occult Dress to Zoran + Index** This reference set provides information on all aspects of clothing and adornment in human culture, from ancient Egyptian wigs to space suits. From ritual garments in societies around the world to fashion models flashing the latest styles on Parisian runways, articles cover the technology, design, and social meaning of dress throughout history. Longer essays on cultural groups and eras appear along side shorter profiles of important people, institutions, textiles, or accessories in a convenient, A-Z sequence. Perspectives from fashion design, anthropology, art history, sociology, business, and history enrich the articles. All entries signed by specialist contributors, include bibliographies and references to related topics. Hundreds of photographs, color insert sections, and line drawings add to the set's appeal for students in high school through college, as well as journalists, designers, and anyone interested in this fascinating facet of everyday life and in this essential field of human creativity.

Encyclopedia Of Clothing And Fashion: 003 (Scribner Library of Daily Life)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Beauty, Grooming, & Style

Charles Scribner`s Sons

A tour of 100 years of American Halloween attire features a wealth of images depicting revelers and trick-or-treaters in disguise and enhanced by special lighting effects, in a volume complemented by a history of the holiday and Halloween fashion.

Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween Costumes and Masquerade

Politics & Social Sciences

Mark Alice Durant

Phyllis Galembo

Social Sciences

Harry N. Abrams

Chic Chicago

Timothy A. Long

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