Staging Fashion 1880 1920

Catalog published in conjunction with the exhibition, Staging Fashion, 1880-1920: Jane Hading, Lily Elsie, Billie Burke, held at the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, from January 17, 2012, through April 8, 2012.

'Fashioning the Self: Identity and Style in British Culture' offers an eclectic approach to contemporary fashion studies. Taking a broad definition of British culture, this collection of essays explores the significance of style to issues such as colonialism, race, gender and class, embracing topics as diverse as eighteenth-century portraiture, literary dress culture and Edwardian working-class glamour. Examining the emblematic power of garments themselves and the context in which they are styled, this work interrogates the ways that personal style can itself decontextualize garments to radically reframe their meanings. Using an intentionally eclectic range of subjects from an interdisciplinary perspective, this collection builds on the work of theorists such as Aileen Ribeiro, Vika Martina Plock, Cheryl Buckley and Hilary Fawcett, to examine the social significance of personal style, while also highlighting the diversity of British culture itself.

Taking cultural theorist Michel de Certeau's notion of 'the everyday' as a critical starting point, this book considers how fashion shapes and is shaped by everyday life. Looking historically for the imprint of fashion within everyday routines such as going to work or shopping, or in leisure activities like dancing, the book identifies the 'fashion system of the ordinary', in which clothing has a distinct role in the making of self and identity. Exploring the period from 1890 to 2010, the study is located in London and New York, cities that emerged as as socially, ethnically and culturally diverse, as well as increasingly fashionable. The book re-focuses fashion discourse away from well-trodden, power-laden dynamics, towards a re-evaluation of time, memory, and above all history, and their relationship to fashion and everyday life. The importance of place and space - and issues of gender, race and social class - provides the broader framework, revealing fashion as both routine and exceptional, and as an increasingly significant part of urban life. By focusing on key themes such as clothing the city, what is worn on the streets, the imagining and performing of multiple identities by dressing up and down, going out, and showing off, Fashion and Everyday Life makes a unique contribution to the literature of fashion studies, fashion history, cultural studies, and beyond.

This book concerns the philosophical analysis of modal sentences. David Lewis’ Modal Translation Scheme "translates" sentences of quantified modal logic into sentences of predicate logic supplemented by counterpart theory. A number of theoretical advantages are thereby secured. One component of the translation scheme makes reference to non-actual but possible worlds i.e. the primitive predicate “at a world(s), w”. The author addresses the problem of advanced modal sentences which threaten this predicate and so the ability of genuine realism to secure the aforementioned theoretical benefits. The problem of advanced modal sentences is a relatively new field of philosophical research. This ground-breaking book will primarily be of interest to researchers in modality, particularly those working in this field.

For the international cast of contributors to this volume being “in fashion” is about self-presentation; defining how fashion is presented in the visual, written, and performing arts; and about design, craft manufacturing, packaging, marketing, and archives.

In this definitive biography, Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson offer a comprehensive look at both the life and legacy of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Drawing on a wide range of sources, they provide a lively and well-rounded account of Ziegfeld as a father, a husband, a son, a friend, a lover, and an alternately ruthless and benevolent employer. Lavishly illustrated, this is an intimate and in-depth portrait of a figure who profoundly changed American entertainment.

How wealthy American women--as consumers and as influencers--helped shape French couture of the late nineteenth century; lavishly illustrated. French fashion of the late nineteenth century is known for its allure, its ineffable chic--think of John Singer Sargent's Madame X and her scandalously slipping strap. For Parisian couturiers and their American customers, it was also serious business. In Dressing Up, Elizabeth Block examines the couturiers' influential clientele--wealthy American women who bolstered the French fashion industry with a steady stream of orders from the United States. Countering the usual narrative of the designer as solo creative genius, Block shows that these women--as high-volume customers and as pre-Internet influencers--were active participants in the era's transnational fashion system. Block describes the arrival of nouveau riche Americans on the French fashion scene, joining European royalty, French socialites, and famous actresses on the client rosters of the best fashion houses--Charles Frederick Worth, Doucet, and Félix, among others. She considers the mutual dependence of couture and coiffure; the participation of couturiers in international expositions (with mixed financial results); the distinctive shopping practices of American women, which ranged from extensive transatlantic travel to quick trips downtown to the department store; the performance of conspicuous consumption at balls and soirées; the impact of American tariffs on the French fashion industry; and the emergence of smuggling, theft, and illicit copying of French fashions in the American market as the middle class emulated the preferences of the rich. Lavishly illustrated, with vibrant images of dresses, portraits, and fashion plates, Dressing Up reveals the power of American women in French couture. Winner of the Aileen Ribeiro Grant of the Association of Dress Historians; an Association for Art History grant; and a Pasold Research Fund grant.

A substantive exploration of theatrical costume Stage costumes reveal character. They tell audiences who the character is or how a character functions within the world of the play, among other things. Theatrical costuming, however, along with other forms of theatre design, has often been considered merely a craft, rather than part of the deeply systemic creation of meaning onstage. In what ways do our clothes shape and reveal our habits of behavior? How do stage costumes work to reveal one kind of habit via the manipulation of another? How might theatre practitioners learn to most effectively exploit this dynamic? Theatre Symposium, Volume 26 analyzes the ways in which meaning is conveyed through costuming for the stage and explores the underlying assumptions embedded in theatrical practice and costume production. THEATRE SYMPOSIUM, VOLUME 26 MICHELE MAJER Plus que Reine: The Napoleonic Revival in Belle Epoque Theatre and Fashion CAITLIN QUINN Creating a Realistic Rendering Pedagogy: The Fashion Illustration Problem ALY RENEE AMIDEI Where'd I Put My Character?: The Costume Character Body and Essential Costuming for the Ensemble Actor KYLA KAZUSCHYK Embracing the Chaos: Creating Costumes for Devised Work DAVID S. THOMPSON Dressing the Image: Costumes in Printed Theatrical Advertising LEAH LOWE Costuming the Audience: Gentility, Consumption, and the Lady’s Theatre Hat in Gilded Age America JORGE SANDOVAL The RuPaul Effect: The Exploration of the Costuming Rituals of Drag Culture in Social Media and the Theatrical Performativity of the Male Body in the Ambit of the Everyday GREGORY S. CARR A Brand New Day on Broadway: The Genius of Geoffrey Holder’s Artistry and His Intentional Evocation of the African Diaspora ANDREW GIBB On the [Historical] Sublime: J. R. Planché’s King John and the Romantic Ideal of the Past