Experimental fashion: performance art, carnival and the grotesque body

Description

List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Against power dressing: Georgina Godley -- Fashioning the maternal body: Rei Kawakubo -- Performing pregnancy: Leigh Bowery -- Deconstruction and the grotesque: Martin Margiela -- Carnivalised time: Martin Margiela -- Carnival iconography: Bernhard Willhelm -- The proliferation of the grotesque: Lady Gaga -- Interview with Nicola Bowery -- Interview with Georgina Godley -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Filmography -- Index.;Experimental Fashion traces the proliferation of the grotesque and carnivalesque within contemporary fashion and the close relation between fashion and performance art, from Lady Gaga's raw meat dress to Leigh Bowery's performance style. The book examines the designers and performance artists at the turn of the twenty-first century whose work challenges established codes of what represents the fashionable body. These innovative people, the book argues, make their challenges through dynamic strategies of parody, humour and inversion. It explores the experimental work of modern designers such as Georgina Godley, Bernhard Willhelm, Rei Kawakubo and fashion designer, performance artist, and club figure Leigh Bowery. It also discusses the increased centrality of experimental fashion through the pop phenomenon, Lady Gaga. List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Against power dressing: Georgina Godley -- Fashioning the maternal body: Rei Kawakubo -- Performing pregnancy: Leigh Bowery -- Deconstruction and the grotesque: Martin Margiela -- Carnivalised time: Martin Margiela -- Carnival iconography: Bernhard Willhelm -- The proliferation of the grotesque: Lady Gaga -- Interview with Nicola Bowery -- Interview with Georgina Godley -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Filmography -- Index.