Fashion Game Changers traces radical innovations in Western fashion design from the beginning of the 20th century to the present.
Challenging the traditional silhouettes of their day, fashion designers such as Madeleine Vionnet and Cristóbal Balenciaga began to liberate the female body from the close-fitting hourglass forms which dominated European and American fashion, instead enveloping bodies in more autonomous garments which often took inspiration from beyond the West. As the century progressed, new generations of avant-garde designers from Rei Kawakubo to Martin Margiela further developed the ideas instigated by their predecessors to defy established notions of femininity in dress, creating space between body and garment. This way, a new relationship between body and dress emerged for the 21st century.
With over 200 images and commentaries from an international range of leading fashion curators and historians, this beautifully illustrated book showcases some of the most revolutionary silhouettes and innovative designs of over 100 years of fashion.
Author(s): Karen Van Godtsenhoven, Miren Arzalluz, Kaat Debo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 292
City: London
Cover
Half-title
Copyright
Title
Contents
1 Fashion Game Changers: Reinventing the Twentieth-Century Silhouette An Introduction
2 Iconoclastic Visions of the Silhouette: Cristóbal Balenciaga
The historicist silhouette of the 1930s
The genesis of an idea
The early years and the influence of the modernists
The evolution of the silhouette in Balenciaga: 1917–1957
The road to abstraction
3 Self-taught and Experimental: A New Approach to the Body
The Inside View — Karin Dillen on wearing Maison Martin Margiela
4 Kindred Spirits: The Radical Poetry of Japanese and Belgian Designers
Fashion thinkers
In the search for a new (old) beauty
The body within
The Inside View — Liliane Lijn on Wearing Issey Miyake
5 The Discovery of Abstraction in Twentieth-century Fashion
Prologue
Japonism and fashion
Poiret: looseness
Vionnet: modern clothing
Conclusion
6 Shadows of the Body
7 Cultural Liberation Springing from Physical Liberation: Reception Study of the 1980s Avant-garde
The Inside View — Isolde Pringiers on Wearing Comme Des Garçons
8 More Game Changers
Louise Boulanger
André Courrèges
Pierre Cardin
Paco Rabanne
Georgina Godley
Endnotes
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Photo Credits
Index
Acknowledgements
