Search results for ""author caroline evans""

A superlative study of the roots of the modern fashion show In the early 20th century, the desire to see clothing in motion flourished on both sides of the Atlantic: models tangoed, slithered, swaggered, and undulated before customers in couture houses and department stores. The Mechanical Smile traces the history of the earliest fashion shows in France and the United States from their origins in the 1880s to 1929, situating them in the context of modernism and the rationalization of the body. Fashion shows came into being concurrently with film, and this book explores the connections between fashion and early cinema, which arguably functioned as what Walter Benjamin called “new velocities”—forces that altered the rhythms of modern life.Using significant new archival evidence, The Mechanical Smile shows how so-called “mannequin parades” employed the visual language of modernism to translate business and management methods into visual seduction. Caroline Evans, a leading fashion historian, argues for an expanded definition of modernism as both gestural and performative, drawing on literary and performance theory rather than relying on art and design history. The fashion show, Evans posits, is a singular nodal point where the disparate histories of commerce, modernism, gender, and the body converge.

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Experimental fashion has a dark side, a preoccupation with representations of death, trauma, alienation and decay. This seminal publication offers an unexpected discussion of cutting-edge fashion in the 1990s, exploring what its disturbing themes tell us about consumer culture and contemporary anxieties. Caroline Evans analyses the work of innovative 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 ground- breaking fashion in unprecedented depth and detail, including the work of such designers as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and Viktor & Rolf, and photographers such as Steven Meisel, Nick Knight and Juergen Teller.Drawing on diverse perspectives from Marx to Walter Benjamin, Evans shows that fashion stands at the very centre of the contemporary, and that it voices some of Western culture’s deepest concerns.

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Caroline Evans brings a refreshingly direct approach to the development of this vital musical skill. Each exercise takes as its starting point TRaK - Time, Rhythm and Key. Helpful and imaginative guidance encourages the student to meet the various practical and interpretative challenges introduced in each new piece. Conveniently presented in 8 progressive volumes corresponding to examination grades, Right@Sight is the only sight-reading course you are likely to need.

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Few phenomena embody the notion of time as well as fashion. Fast-moving and rooted in the 'now', it’s constantly creating its own past through the process of rapid style change. Uniquely poised between the past and the future, fashion’s relationship with time is unorthodox. Rather than considering time in the conventional sense, this anthology explores three alternative ways to think about fashion and time: the first identifies the seasonal nature of fashion as an industry, and shows how this has impacted on workers and wearers alike. The second looks at fashion design as a ceaseless process of adaptation, reconstruction and recombination of motifs, in which nostalgia and revivals play their part. The third construes fashion’s 'imaginary', with its capacity for fantasy and myth-making, as a form of alternate history that asks 'what if?' Within this framework, key classic texts are juxtaposed with lesser known ones, in an interdisciplinary approach that includes philosophy, history, literature, media and fashion design, ranging from the 18th century to the present. It will be of interest to anyone wishing to understand one of the most complex yet inescapable aspects of fashion, its relationship to time, and will be a critical resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the humanities and all those interested in fashion in all its creative, commercial and cultural aspects.

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In this timely book, three noted fashion historians examine the global transformations in the fashion industry today, and identify the challenges of the future. Since the dawn of designer fashion at the beginning of the 20th century, the role and position of the designer has drastically changed. This book addresses how the interpretation of creativity, authorship, craft, and innovation have evolved in this new context, and asks what role designers play in a globalised and digitised fashion world.

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