Images on the Page: A Fashion Iconography

Description

Fashion imagery has existed for hundreds of years and yet the methods used by scholars to understand it have remained mostly historical and descriptive. The belief informing these approaches may be that fashion imagery is designed for one purpose: to depict a garment and how to wear it. In this interdisciplinary book, Sanda Miller suggests a radical alternative to these well-practiced approaches, proposing that fashion imagery has stories to tell and meanings to uncover. The methodology she has developed is an iconography of fashion imagery, based on the same theory which has been key to the History of Art for centuries. Applying Panofsky's theory of iconography to illustrations from books, magazines and fashion plates, as well as fashion photography and even live fashion events, Miller uncovers three levels of meaning: descriptive, secondary (or conventional) and tertiary or 'symbolic'. In doing so, she answers questions such as who is the model; what did people wear and why; and how did people live? She proves that fashion imagery, far from being purely descriptive, is ripe with meaning and can be used to shed light on society, class, culture and the history of dress. Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Figures Foreword Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction: A new tool for the fashion image: Iconography Rationale Iconography and its uses in the history of art Structuralism and its uses in media and fashion studies The link between iconography and semiotics Iconography and the fashion images: Fritz Saxl’s ‘discovery’ of Il Libro del Sarto Semiotics and the fashion image Iconography and the fashion image Case study: Giorgione’s La Tempesta and David LaChapelle’s Burning Down the House Chapter 2: Renaissance books of clothes How did it all begin? Villard de Honnecourt’s ‘Sketchbook’ Renaissance books of costume: A neglected subject of study Fritz Saxl’s ‘discovery’ of Il Libro del Sarto Hans Weigel’s Trachtenbuch, 1577 Christoph Weiditz’s ‘Book of Costumes’: Trachtenbuch 1560–80 Cesare Vecellio’s Degli habiti antichi e moderni Matthäus Schwarz’s Klaidungsbüchlein or the Trachtenbuch (1520–60) Chapter 3: The seventeenth century: A new profession – the gentleman journalist writing for Le Mercure galant The Counter-Reformation and its consequences: Catholicism versus Protestantism The reign of Louis XIV and the Court of Versailles A new institution: the fashion magazine Louis XIV’s legacy Capturing elegance in the printed image at the French Court Capturing the everyday in the printed image Capturing elegance in England: A Bohemian printmaker, Wenceslaus Hollar Capturing the everyday on the printed page during the Restoration Chapter 4: The eighteenth century: From the fashion doll to the fashion plate Reconfiguring the paradox of the Enlightenment and its revolutions The ‘revolution’ in sartorial fashion Visual representations of sartorial dress during the Directory period In painting On stage In fashion magazines The genesis of the Directory style The ‘revolution’ of the fashion plate Chapter 5: Capturing modernity in nineteenth-century France and England Paris and La Parisienne The invention of photography: Nadar and Disdéri The ‘invention’ of haute couture The relationship between painting, fashion illustration, literature and haute couture Commercialism and the fashion magazine Romanticism, historicism and the return to historic costume: Auguste Racinet’s Le Costume Historique Rebellion and reform against the tyranny of fashion in England: Death to the crinoline! Chapter 6: Modernism Part One: Fashion and art; is fashion art? Pioneering ‘modernism’ on the fashion plate: Paul Poiret The relationship between fashion and the first avant-garde movements: Fauvism and cubism Paul Iribe’s ‘Directory’ album and Georges Lepape’s ‘Orientalist’ album A new way of presenting images on the page: Fashion photography Fashion and art, case study: Madeleine Vionnet and Thayaht The aftermath of the Second World War and the ideological division of Europe Existentialism, feminism and fashion Part Two: The photographed image on the page Christian Dior and the ‘New Look’ Cristobal Balenciaga: A couturier of his time The 1960s: ‘Street’ fashion in London and Paris ‘Anti-fashion’: Vivienne Westwood, queen of punk The 1980s: ‘Thatcherism’, ‘Power’ dressing and the YUPPIES The arrival of the Japanese in Europe The 1990s Part Three: The fashion show: Fashion as ‘spectacle’ Conclusion Bibliography Index