Design History Beyond the Canon subverts hierarchies of taste which have dominated traditional na... more Design History Beyond the Canon subverts hierarchies of taste which have dominated traditional narratives of design history. The book explores a diverse selection of objects, spaces and media, ranging from high design to mass-produced and mass-marketed objects, as well as counter-cultural and sub-cultural material.
The authors' research highlights the often marginalised role of gender and racial identity in the production and consumption of design, the politics which underpins design practice and the role of designed objects as pathways of nostalgia and cultural memory. While focused primarily on North American examples from the early 20th century onwards, this collection also features essays examining European and Soviet design history, as well as the influence of Asia and Africa on Western design practice.
The book is organised in three thematic sections: Consumers, Intermediaries and Designers. The first section analyses a range of designed objects and spaces through the experiences and perspectives of users. The second section considers intermediaries from both technology and cultural industries, as well as the hidden labour within the design process itself. The final section focuses on designers from multiple design disciplines including high fashion, industrial design, interior design, graphic design and design history pedagogy.
The essays in all three sections utilise different research methods and a wide range of theoretical approaches, including feminist theory, critical race theory, spatial theory, material culture studies, science and technology studies and art history. Design History Beyond the Canon brings together the most recent research which stretches beyond the traditional canon and looks to interdisciplinary methodologies to better understand the practice and consumption of design.
In American fashion magazines in the 1930s, images and descriptions of white women taking on the ... more In American fashion magazines in the 1930s, images and descriptions of white women taking on the clothes of non-white women abound: burnouse cloaks, coo-lie caps, sombreros, turbans, and saris all make frequent appearances. This paper will explore the ways these fashions are given meaning for readers in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar so that we can understand how these Orientalist and Primitivist fashions were used to construct their wearers' modern white femininity. The fashionable white woman was rendered modern through her infinite malleability-she can reshape her appearance with clothing, jewelry, makeup, diet and exercise-while the "other" is primitive, eternally wearing that same traditional clothing. This paper will consider the specific cases of the branding of the Bali bra, the sari, as well as "coolie" coats and hats.
Elsa Schiaparelli is usually remembered for her whimsical and outlandish designs, shocking pink, ... more Elsa Schiaparelli is usually remembered for her whimsical and outlandish designs, shocking pink, butterfly-shaped buttons, the high heel hat and trompe l’oeil sweaters. What is less remembered are Schiaparelli’s darker designs. In the late 1930s, on the eve of World War II, Schiaparelli’s designs took a distinct sinister turn. This article explores two designs from her 1938 Circus Collection that were collaborations with the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí: the Tear-Illusion Dress and the Skeleton Dress. Comparison of these designs with the work of contemporary designers Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and Olivier Theyskens shows the darker undertones of Schiaparelli’s Circus Collection and its significant impact on designers at the turn of the twenty-first century. These designs reassert the corporality and mortality of the clothed body and emphasize its vulnerability. Drawing on Caroline Evan’s readings of deathliness and trauma in postmodern fashion, I will examine these impulses in the work of Schiaparelli. This article will seek to show the dark side of Schiaparelli’s work and the ways in which she responded to the impending threat of totalitarianism in the late 1930s.
Design History Beyond the Canon subverts hierarchies of taste which have dominated traditional na... more Design History Beyond the Canon subverts hierarchies of taste which have dominated traditional narratives of design history. The book explores a diverse selection of objects, spaces and media, ranging from high design to mass-produced and mass-marketed objects, as well as counter-cultural and sub-cultural material.
The authors' research highlights the often marginalised role of gender and racial identity in the production and consumption of design, the politics which underpins design practice and the role of designed objects as pathways of nostalgia and cultural memory. While focused primarily on North American examples from the early 20th century onwards, this collection also features essays examining European and Soviet design history, as well as the influence of Asia and Africa on Western design practice.
The book is organised in three thematic sections: Consumers, Intermediaries and Designers. The first section analyses a range of designed objects and spaces through the experiences and perspectives of users. The second section considers intermediaries from both technology and cultural industries, as well as the hidden labour within the design process itself. The final section focuses on designers from multiple design disciplines including high fashion, industrial design, interior design, graphic design and design history pedagogy.
The essays in all three sections utilise different research methods and a wide range of theoretical approaches, including feminist theory, critical race theory, spatial theory, material culture studies, science and technology studies and art history. Design History Beyond the Canon brings together the most recent research which stretches beyond the traditional canon and looks to interdisciplinary methodologies to better understand the practice and consumption of design.
In American fashion magazines in the 1930s, images and descriptions of white women taking on the ... more In American fashion magazines in the 1930s, images and descriptions of white women taking on the clothes of non-white women abound: burnouse cloaks, coo-lie caps, sombreros, turbans, and saris all make frequent appearances. This paper will explore the ways these fashions are given meaning for readers in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar so that we can understand how these Orientalist and Primitivist fashions were used to construct their wearers' modern white femininity. The fashionable white woman was rendered modern through her infinite malleability-she can reshape her appearance with clothing, jewelry, makeup, diet and exercise-while the "other" is primitive, eternally wearing that same traditional clothing. This paper will consider the specific cases of the branding of the Bali bra, the sari, as well as "coolie" coats and hats.
Elsa Schiaparelli is usually remembered for her whimsical and outlandish designs, shocking pink, ... more Elsa Schiaparelli is usually remembered for her whimsical and outlandish designs, shocking pink, butterfly-shaped buttons, the high heel hat and trompe l’oeil sweaters. What is less remembered are Schiaparelli’s darker designs. In the late 1930s, on the eve of World War II, Schiaparelli’s designs took a distinct sinister turn. This article explores two designs from her 1938 Circus Collection that were collaborations with the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí: the Tear-Illusion Dress and the Skeleton Dress. Comparison of these designs with the work of contemporary designers Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and Olivier Theyskens shows the darker undertones of Schiaparelli’s Circus Collection and its significant impact on designers at the turn of the twenty-first century. These designs reassert the corporality and mortality of the clothed body and emphasize its vulnerability. Drawing on Caroline Evan’s readings of deathliness and trauma in postmodern fashion, I will examine these impulses in the work of Schiaparelli. This article will seek to show the dark side of Schiaparelli’s work and the ways in which she responded to the impending threat of totalitarianism in the late 1930s.
This project examines the complex relationships between Surrealism and fashion between World War ... more This project examines the complex relationships between Surrealism and fashion between World War I and World War II. Scholarship on art and fashion has typically understood fashion as being passively influenced by art or using art for the sake of profit. I argue that far from being superficial and incidental to Surrealism, fashion played an integral role in this artistic movement. Designers were engaging with Surrealism on a complex level. The everyday world in the years between the wars was filled with surreal images, many of them intentionally created by female fashion designers. By examining fashion in concert with art in the interwar period, I tease out how clothing, particularly women’s clothing, relates to the psyche. Moving past notions of voyeurism, narcissism, and gender as performance, I work to interrogate a crucial aspect of fashion that involves women looking at women independent of the male gaze. This is a gaze that engages with fantasy. Flicking through the pages of a fashion magazine a woman does not see the model only as an object, but projects herself into the clothes the model wears, imagining how she will look in them, where she might wear them. Even if this woman never buys these clothes or sees them in the flesh, she has consumed fashion. I argue that she does not consume it in the erotic or voyeuristic way that traditional feminist theory describes, but rather through identification, which is vicarious and engaged with fantasy. By engaging with art historical responses to Surrealism I have found new ways to understand a new fashion aesthetic in the 1930s, which I call “Strange Glamour.” I examine the development of this aesthetic and the relationship between fashion and Surrealism by focusing on a series of key events. I begin in chapter one with 1921, the year in which Coco Chanel launched her perfume Chanel No. 5 and Marcel Duchamp created his perfume readymade, Belle Haleine. I compare the ways that Chanel and Duchamp questioned conventions of authorship in art and fashion through the molding of their public personae. They instigated a new kind of relationship between the artist or designer and the work of art or garment in which both parts are crucial to making sense of the whole. This radical change in authorship lays the groundwork for the interactions between fashion and art in the next several decades. The second chapter focuses on 1927, the year that designer Elsa Schiaparelli created her first design, a trompe l’oeil sweater. This sweater, along with several of Schiaparelli’s other early designs, is directly linked with the Surrealists’ use of trompe l’oeil in painting, and their engagement with the uncanny. This chapter also considers Man Ray’s photographs of Schiaparelli’s hats, which illustrated an article by Tristan Tzara on subconscious expressions of sexuality in the everyday world in the Surrealist magazine Minotaure in 1933. Far from being automatic writing, as Tzara describes, I argue that these hats were the self conscious creation of Schiaparelli. The 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition and the 1937 exhibition La Mode Au Congo at Galerie Charles Ratton frame the third chapter, which considers the role of primitivism in Surrealism and fashion during these years, particularly in relation to sexuality. I examine the designs of French milliner Madame Agnes that were influenced by the 1931 exhibition, and the unique hats made by American milliner Lilly Daché in response to a collection of hats she purchased from the Congo. I also consider a unique group of photographs of these Congolese hats by Man Ray that were shown at the Ratton exhibition. The fourth and final chapter examines the links between Schiaparelli’s designs of the late 1930s, the uncanny, and Andre Breton’s idea of convulsive beauty, beauty which was meant to shock. I consider Schiaparelli’s designs in the context of Surrealist objects, and examine the important (and often neglected) links between Schiaparelli’s provocative display at the 1937 Exposition Internationale and the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, both in Paris. My dissertation demonstrates that an examination of the relationship between fashion and Surrealism can enrich our understanding of this period in art and fashion and can also illuminate larger theoretical issues positioned at their intersection. Through a rigorous engagement with archival sources, I trace the historical relationships between fashion and Surrealism and point to the continued importance of collaboration, dialogue, and influence between these realms.
Iké Udé was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and became an avid consumer of magazines as an English boardi... more Iké Udé was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and became an avid consumer of magazines as an English boarding school student there. The codes of glamour and elegance in these magazines are part of what Udé is trafficking in with the Sartorial Anarchy Series. Trafficking – a word that Udé uses quite a bit to describe this series – is particularly apt, suggesting boundary transgressions, both licit and illicit. Udé poses in an astonishing array of men's clothing from various cultures and eras.
Book Review Issues like marriage equality, #BlackLivesMatter, and #metoo are demanding an inclusi... more Book Review Issues like marriage equality, #BlackLivesMatter, and #metoo are demanding an inclusive voice, justice, and equity across the globe. As institutionalized norms are being challenged and power structures denounced, it makes sense that the traditions of design history are also interrogated. Design History Beyond the Canon critically acknowledges the problems surrounding diversity in design and explores ways to address them. The topics covered by the authors are eclectic and serve to demonstrate the possibility of more inclusive narratives. Questioning the existing limitations of sole geniuses and conventional art histories, Design History Beyond the Canon is an appealing resource for design academics and students alike.
In Sartorial Anarchy Untitled #4, artist Iké Udé poses for his own camera in a manner that appear... more In Sartorial Anarchy Untitled #4, artist Iké Udé poses for his own camera in a manner that appears casual: hand on hip, legs crossed, with one finger casually touching the brass Boy Scout bugle sitting on a stool to the right. He wears a Boy Scout shirt with a lacy black seventeenth-century necktie and a black cummerbund over a pair of tweed breeches with bright green and yellow Italian soccer socks and a pair of British Tricker's bespoke boots. A vivid green, embroidered Afghani coat is draped over his shoulders. Perched on the top of Udé's head is a boater hat bedecked with flowers in the style of Eaton's June 4 celebration in honor of King George III's birthday in which students of the exclusive school row in a boating parade. Of course his posture, like the motley ensemble he wears, is anything but casual. The vertical iris atop the boater hat echoes the arrangement of palm leaves on the stool on the right. The careless but knowing pose echoes that of John Singer Sargent's enigmatic Madame X (1883-4). Casual and aloof, both Udé and Madame X turn away from us, refusing to meet our eyes directly. Udé creates an exquisite color harmony between the greens of the palm leaves, his Italian football socks, and the Afghani coat. This is coordinated with a suite of burnt oranges, khakis, and beiges, in the rug, tablecloth, coat lining, Boy Scout shirt, and tweed breeches. The backdrop of the image, hand painted by Udé, echoes these colors in softer tones. In his series of photographs Sartorial Anarchy, Iké Udé adopts the pose of the dandy, fashioning images of himself that destabilize masculinity as well as the trope of exoticism in fashion.
In American fashion magazines in the 1930s, images and descriptions of white women taking on the ... more In American fashion magazines in the 1930s, images and descriptions of white women taking on the clothes of non-white women abound: burnouse cloaks, coolie caps, sombreros, turbans, and saris all make frequent appearances. This paper will explore the ways these fashions are given meaning for readers in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar so that we can understand how these Orientalist and Primitivist fashions were used to construct their wearers' modern white femininity. The fashionable white woman was rendered modern through her infinite malleability—she can reshape her appearance with clothing, jewelry, makeup, diet and exercise—while the “other” is primitive, eternally wearing that same traditional clothing. This paper will consider the specific cases of the branding of the Bali bra, the sari, as well as “coolie” coats and hats.
Elsa Schiaparelli is usually remembered for her whimsical and outlandish designs, shocking pink, ... more Elsa Schiaparelli is usually remembered for her whimsical and outlandish designs, shocking pink, butterfly-shaped buttons, the high heel hat and trompe l’oeil sweaters. What is less remembered are Schiaparelli’s darker designs. In the late 1930s, on the eve of World War II, Schiaparelli’s designs took a distinct sinister turn. This article explores two designs from her 1938 Circus Collection that were collaborations with the Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí: the Tear-Illusion Dress and the Skeleton Dress. Comparison of these designs with the work of contemporary designers Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and Olivier Theyskens shows the darker undertones of Schiaparelli’s Circus Collection and its significant impact on designers at the turn of the twenty-first century. These designs reassert the corporality and mortality of the clothed body and emphasize its vulnerability. Drawing on Caroline Evan’s readings of deathliness and trauma in postmodern fashion, I will examine these impulses in the work of Schiaparelli. This article will seek to show the dark side of Schiaparelli’s work and the ways in which she responded to the impending threat of totalitarianism in the late 1930s.
This project examines the complex relationships between Surrealism and fashion between World War ... more This project examines the complex relationships between Surrealism and fashion between World War I and World War II. Scholarship on art and fashion has typically understood fashion as being passively influenced by art or using art for the sake of profit. I argue that far from being ...
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The authors' research highlights the often marginalised role of gender and racial identity in the production and consumption of design, the politics which underpins design practice and the role of designed objects as pathways of nostalgia and cultural memory. While focused primarily on North American examples from the early 20th century onwards, this collection also features essays examining European and Soviet design history, as well as the influence of Asia and Africa on Western design practice.
The book is organised in three thematic sections: Consumers, Intermediaries and Designers. The first section analyses a range of designed objects and spaces through the experiences and perspectives of users. The second section considers intermediaries from both technology and cultural industries, as well as the hidden labour within the design process itself. The final section focuses on designers from multiple design disciplines including high fashion, industrial design, interior design, graphic design and design history pedagogy.
The essays in all three sections utilise different research methods and a wide range of theoretical approaches, including feminist theory, critical race theory, spatial theory, material culture studies, science and technology studies and art history. Design History Beyond the Canon brings together the most recent research which stretches beyond the traditional canon and looks to interdisciplinary methodologies to better understand the practice and consumption of design.
The authors' research highlights the often marginalised role of gender and racial identity in the production and consumption of design, the politics which underpins design practice and the role of designed objects as pathways of nostalgia and cultural memory. While focused primarily on North American examples from the early 20th century onwards, this collection also features essays examining European and Soviet design history, as well as the influence of Asia and Africa on Western design practice.
The book is organised in three thematic sections: Consumers, Intermediaries and Designers. The first section analyses a range of designed objects and spaces through the experiences and perspectives of users. The second section considers intermediaries from both technology and cultural industries, as well as the hidden labour within the design process itself. The final section focuses on designers from multiple design disciplines including high fashion, industrial design, interior design, graphic design and design history pedagogy.
The essays in all three sections utilise different research methods and a wide range of theoretical approaches, including feminist theory, critical race theory, spatial theory, material culture studies, science and technology studies and art history. Design History Beyond the Canon brings together the most recent research which stretches beyond the traditional canon and looks to interdisciplinary methodologies to better understand the practice and consumption of design.
By examining fashion in concert with art in the interwar period, I tease out how clothing, particularly women’s clothing, relates to the psyche. Moving past notions of voyeurism, narcissism, and gender as performance, I work to interrogate a crucial aspect of fashion that involves women looking at women independent of the male gaze. This is a gaze that engages with fantasy. Flicking through the pages of a fashion magazine a woman does not see the model only as an object, but projects herself into the clothes the model wears, imagining how she will look in them, where she might wear them. Even if this woman never buys these clothes or sees them in the flesh, she has consumed fashion. I argue that she does not consume it in the erotic or voyeuristic way that traditional feminist theory describes, but rather through identification, which is vicarious and engaged with fantasy.
By engaging with art historical responses to Surrealism I have found new ways to understand a new fashion aesthetic in the 1930s, which I call “Strange Glamour.” I examine the development of this aesthetic and the relationship between fashion and Surrealism by focusing on a series of key events. I begin in chapter one with 1921, the year in which Coco Chanel launched her perfume Chanel No. 5 and Marcel Duchamp created his perfume readymade, Belle Haleine. I compare the ways that Chanel and Duchamp questioned conventions of authorship in art and fashion through the molding of their public personae. They instigated a new kind of relationship between the artist or designer and the work of art or garment in which both parts are crucial to making sense of the whole. This radical change in authorship lays the groundwork for the interactions between fashion and art in the next several decades.
The second chapter focuses on 1927, the year that designer Elsa Schiaparelli created her first design, a trompe l’oeil sweater. This sweater, along with several of Schiaparelli’s other early designs, is directly linked with the Surrealists’ use of trompe l’oeil in painting, and their engagement with the uncanny. This chapter also considers Man Ray’s photographs of Schiaparelli’s hats, which illustrated an article by Tristan Tzara on subconscious expressions of sexuality in the everyday world in the Surrealist magazine Minotaure in 1933. Far from being automatic writing, as Tzara describes, I argue that these hats were the self conscious creation of Schiaparelli.
The 1931 Paris Colonial Exhibition and the 1937 exhibition La Mode Au Congo at Galerie Charles Ratton frame the third chapter, which considers the role of primitivism in Surrealism and fashion during these years, particularly in relation to sexuality. I examine the designs of French milliner Madame Agnes that were influenced by the 1931 exhibition, and the unique hats made by American milliner Lilly Daché in response to a collection of hats she purchased from the Congo. I also consider a unique group of photographs of these Congolese hats by Man Ray that were shown at the Ratton exhibition.
The fourth and final chapter examines the links between Schiaparelli’s designs of the late 1930s, the uncanny, and Andre Breton’s idea of convulsive beauty, beauty which was meant to shock. I consider Schiaparelli’s designs in the context of Surrealist objects, and examine the important (and often neglected) links between Schiaparelli’s provocative display at the 1937 Exposition Internationale and the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, both in Paris.
My dissertation demonstrates that an examination of the relationship between fashion and Surrealism can enrich our understanding of this period in art and fashion and can also illuminate larger theoretical issues positioned at their intersection. Through a rigorous engagement with archival sources, I trace the historical relationships between fashion and Surrealism and point to the continued importance of collaboration, dialogue, and influence between these realms.