Search results for ""Author Christopher Breward""

For over 400 years the tailored suit has dominated wardrobes the world over. Its simple forms, inspired by royal, military, religious and professional clothing, have provided a functional and often elegant uniform for modern life. But whether bespoke or tailor-made, on the street or in the office, during times of celebration or of crisis, we typically take the suit for granted, ignoring its complex construction and many symbolic meanings.The Suit unpicks the story of this most familiar garment, from its emergence in western Europe at the end of the seventeenth century to today. Suit-wearing figures such as the Savile Row gentleman and the Wall Street businessman have long embodied ideas of tradition, masculinity, power and respectability, but the suit has also been used to disrupt concepts of gender and conformity. Adopted and subverted by women, artists, musicians and social revolutionaries through the decades - from dandies and Sapeurs to the Zoot Suit and Le Smoking - the suit is also a device for challenging the status quo. For all those interested in the history of menswear, this beautifully illustrated book offers new perspectives on this most mundane, and poetic, product of modern culture.

Read more less

The Ambassador has been described as 'probably the most daring and enterprising trade magazine ever conceived'. This book takes a detailed look at the background and impact of the magazine and the ambitious photo shoots that showcased the latest couture fashions.

Read more less

This illustrated survey of 600 years of fashion investigates its cultural and social meanings from medieval Europe to 20th-century America. It provides a guide to the changes in style and taste, and challenges existing fashion histories, showing that clothes have always played a pivotal role in defining a sense of identity and society, especially when concerned with sexual and body politics. With a chronological structure, each chapter focuses on both male and female fashion of a specific period, covering its fascinating developments. It discusses: androgynous dressing; body piercing; fabrics, clothing and the rise of city life; dress, and the changing shape of the human body; controversies surrounding trousers and leg wear for both men and women; exposure of flesh; fashion and social status; and the dissemination of fashion through travel, film, magazines and catwalk shows.

Read more less

The study of fashion has expanded into a thriving field of inquiry, with researchers utilizing diverse methods from across subject disciplines to explore fashion and dress in wide-ranging contexts. With an emphasis on material culture and ethnographic approaches in fashion studies, this groundbreaking volume offers fascinating insights into the complex dynamics of research and fashion. Featuring unique case studies, with interdisciplinary scholars reflecting on their practical research experiences, Fashion Studies provides rich and nuanced perspectives on the use, and mixing and matching of methodological approaches – including object and image based research, the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods and the fluid bridging of theory and practice. Engaging with diverse subjects, from ethnographies of model casting and street-style blogging, wardrobe studies and a material culture analysis of global denim wearing, to Martin Margiela’s design and archival methods, Fashion Studies presents complex approaches in a lively and informative manner that will appeal to students of fashion, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and related fields.

Read more less

Styling Shanghai is the first book dedicated to exploring the city’s fashion cultures, examining its growing status as one of the world’s foremost fashion cities. From its origins as an international treaty port in the 19th century, Shanghai has emerged as a global leader in the production, mediation and consumption of fashion. This book reveals how the material and imaginative context of this thriving urban centre has produced vivid interpretations of fashion as object, image and idea. Bringing together contributions by a range of leading international fashion historians and theorists, and drawing on extensive original research, Styling Shanghai offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the mega-city’s shifting position as a fashion capital. Rooted in collaboration between leading UK, Australian and Shanghai-based institutions, it considers the impact of local and global textile manufacturing, the representation and marketing of ‘Shanghai Style’, bodies and gender in the ‘Paris of the East’, and the challenges of globalization, commercialization and digital communication in contemporary Shanghai.

Read more less

British Design brings together leading international scholars, designers and journalists to provide new perspectives on British design in the last sixty years, and how it at once looked back to the past with the continuation of traditions that spoke to Britain's design heritage, and looked forwards with the embrace of modernist and postmodernist style. The book responds to and develops new ways of understanding the recent history of design in Britain, with case studies on designed spaces and objects, including domestic interiors, retail spaces, schools and university buildings and transport. The contributors address significant moments and phenomena in the historical and social history of British design, from the rise and fall of the English Country House style and the Brutalist architectural boom of the 1960s to the modern shopping space, and consider the work of key contemporary designers ranging from Tommy Roberts to Thomas Heatherwick. British Design provides new criticism and analysis on how design, from the immediate post-war period to the present day, has developed and changed how we live and how we interact with the spaces in which we live. British Design is split into 13 chapters and is richly illustrated with 65 images, 16 of which are in full colour.

Read more less