Soviet style and death of luxury: 8 books to begin to understand fashion
fashion industry takes a solid place in our lives - and speech, of course, not only about clothes in the closet. Clothing is the embodiment of global social trends that are tirelessly exploring to unravel the most diverse phenomena of our life. We have collected some boring works on the theory of fashion that will open the fashion industry from an unusual side and give food for thought about the purpose of clothing.
Roland Barth
"Fashion System"
Structuralist philosopher Roland Barth actually gave the science of fashion no less than, say, Coco Chanel gave the world of design and style. The Frenchman was the first to consider fashion as a system of signs, symbols and concepts - this approach later became the starting point for many other fashion studies.
Bart introduces an understanding of fashion as a myth, which occupies one of the central positions in the public consumption system (the course of structuralism is largely based on the study of consumerism society). The philosopher argues on the subtypes of fashion and divides it into "everyday" and "represented." The latter just applies to gloss and advertising campaigns that make us dream and buy. How this desire comes to our heads through the language of fashion magazines and the alignment of images can be learned from the book.
Teri Agins
"The End of Fashion"
Fashion has long ceased to be the prerogative of French couturiers and refined ateliers, a sort of privilege of the rich. The fashion industry, even when we are not talking about the mass market, but about such major brands as Gucci or Balenciaga, is committed to accessibility and communication with customers. But despite the fact that the departure of fashion into the mainstream became clearly visible only now (partly, of course, thanks to social networks), this process was launched a long time ago.
Find the moment of migration of fashionable design in the field of marketing will help fashion-columnist The Wall Street Journal c twenty years experience. The book of Teri Agins is even forced to read at universities - it can find the answer to the question of what changes in the second half of the 20th century led to the current state of things, as well as many interesting insights from the fashion world.
Barbara Winken, Mark Hewson
"Fashion Zeitgeist: Trends and Cyclesin the Fashion System"
When crocs appear on the catwalks, T-shirts with the Kino group, as well as all sorts of variations of the archival collections of Raf Simons and Martin Margiela, the talk about postmodernism comes up on its own. It seems that all modern fashion is the recycling of old ideas.
So where do trends come from - are they materializing from the chaos of the past, or are they devised by specialized agencies along with influenzers, marketers and designers? Answer unequivocally difficult - the authors of the textbook on fashion and sociology Barbara Winken and Mark Hewson put forward a popular theory about the cyclical nature of fashion, based on a thorough study of fashion from the end of the 20th century. Winken and Hewson dissect the works of Yoji Yamamoto, Ray Kawakubo, Martin Margiela, Karl Lagerfeld, Jean-Paul Gauthier and other designers who first started working with postmodernism, and analyze the phenomenon of fashion, reworking their own past.
Christopher Bruard and Caroline Evans
"Fashion and Modernity"
Fashion and society are interrelated things, and it seems that in the past two years no one has any doubts about this. Elections in the United States, the new rise of feminism, the erosion of gender boundaries and much more - social and political trends are reflected in the collections of designers. Why is this happening - namely, how modernity creates fashion and vice versa - Christopher Bruard and Carolyn Evans analyze in their book.
Giurgia Bartlett
"FashionEast: A Ghost Wandering Through Eastern Europe"
It seems that in the USSR there was not much - including fashion. This, of course, is not at all the case: even if the “Parisian trends” were considered a reflection of the ghost of capitalism, there was a specific fashion industry on the territory of the Soviets, which, unlike the western one, carried not ideological but ideological pressure. Dzhurdzha Bartlett knows a lot about this - and knows how exciting it is to tell about many things: how Soviet fashion developed after the revolution, right up to the collapse of the Union, how Russian women designers developed the first prototypes of gender-based clothes in the framework of constructivism and even we found the "red Dior" in the face of Slava Zaitsev.
Maria Grinde Arntzen
"Dress code"
Another book that dissects fashion as one of the central pillars of consumer society, and fashion journalism as the embodiment of power over minds and the habit of buying. In many ways, Maria Greende Arntzen is walking along the pillars of the same Bart, considering the fashion industry as an institution.
What makes this book strikingly different from the ideological inspirers is its modernity and how skillfully it fit into the context. The author tears off covers from the fifth largest industry in the world and raises issues such as overproduction, environmental impact, and low wages in third world countries. As they say, it makes you think - including about how many unnecessary things we actually consume and what it is fraught with.
Colin McDowell
"Fashion Anatomy"
The book can really be compared only with an encyclopedia - it is so meticulous and multifaceted it covers fashion as a phenomenon. Although “Anatomy of Fashion” can hardly be taken with you because of the impressive size of the publication (it will always help out the electronic version), it is quite possible to keep the volume as a reference book. This kind of work will not be a shame to pass by inheritance: the author collected in one place one of the most complete fashion stories, with a detailed analysis of its phenomena, from the meaning of hair in Ancient Egypt and the secret of tight trousers of court nobles of the 8th century to Vankienne Westwood of Punk.
Dana Thomas
"How Luxury Lost Its Luster"
Dana Thomas - a journalist, author of many curious industrial investigations, published the first book, How Luxury Lost Its Luster, in 2008. Thomas refuses to pour terms and excitingly tells the story of the luxury clothing market, pouring jokes and bikes. The work progressively parses how fashion from privileged art has become a big supermarket and how even status fashion houses have become fast-fashionable.
Thomas is mercilessly traversed by major concerns, explaining to which methods LVMH and Kering have resorted for profit, whether it be the production of a cult bag, perfume or the exploitation of celebrity images.