Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness
Product Description
Recent experimental fashion has a dark side, a preoccupation with representations of death, trauma, alienation, and decay. This intriguing book looks closely at this strand of fashion design in the 1990s, exploring what its disturbing themes tell us about consumer culture and contemporary anxieties. Caroline Evans analyzes the work of experimental designers, the images of fashion photographers, and the spectacular fashion shows that developed in the final decade of the twentieth century to arrive at a new understanding of fashion’s dark side and what it signifies.
Fashion at the Edge considers a range of cutting-edge contemporary fashion in unprecedented depth and detail, including the work of such current designers as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and Viktor & Rolf. Contrasting images by photographers like Steven Meisel, Nick Knight, and Juergen Teller are also reviewed. Drawing on diverse perspectives from Marx to Walter Benjamin, Evans shows that fashion stands at the very center of the contemporary, and that it voices some of Western culture’s deepest concerns.
Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness
Written by admin under Fashion Books.
Roger Tredre/WGSN
September 6, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Caroline Evans has written an important book that explores the work of cutting-edge designers of the 1990s such as Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Viktor & Rolf. The book’s subtitle – “Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness” – sums up the author’s focus on the underside of fashion. Evans acknowledges that much of the fashion featured in this book was “economically negligible”, arguing that its cultural import is of greater significance. She explores how designers of the 90s consciously or unconsciously explored the dark history of the 20th century through their work, with death, trauma, cruelty, and horror as recurring themes.
Where is this all leading? The conclusions are doom-laden but fascinating. British designers, with their focus on “gothic fashion”, may represent the ghost or shadow of rational American designers. Creatively, Evans posits a bleak future for fashion “doomed to ricochet between modernist experimentation and dark despair.” In a memorable line, Evans writes: “Now, more than ever, everything new and beautiful seems to arrive already haunted by its own demise.” The financial insecurity of many of these designers in their early days may have fuelled their creativity. They were, as designer and teacher Fabio Piras put it, “fashion desperadoes”. This book is full of illuminating insights that put fashion design at the core of our culture, expressing our deepest concerns.
Outstandingly researched, beautifully illustrated, and thrillingly authoritative, Fashion at the Edge may prove to be the definitive book on the generation of designers from London and Antwerp who came to prominence in the 1990s.
Rating: 5 / 5
Carrie Grace
September 6, 2010 at 7:02 pm
The photographs, stories of design history and research in this book are phenonmenal. This is a great book to inspire, shock and mesmerize. It is my most recent favorite in my costume research collection.
Rating: 5 / 5