The Japanese Revolution In Paris Fashion

Paris is renowned as the greatest fashion capital in the world. It has a rigid and tightly controlled system that non-western designers have difficulty penetrating. Yet a number of the most influential Japanese designers have broken into this scene and made a major impact. How? Kawamura shows how French fashion has been both disturbed and strengthened by the addition of "outside" forces such as Kenzo Takada, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, and Hanae Mori. She considers many other key questions the fashion industry should be asking itself. Does the system facilitate or inhibit creativity? Has it become preoccupied with the commercial projection of "product images" rather than with the clothing itself? And what direction will French fashion take without Saint Laurent, Miyake and Kenzo? This is the first in-depth study of the Japanese revolution in Paris fashion and raises provocative questions for the future of the industry.

The Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons is undoubtedly one of the world's major fashion designers. In 2017 she was the second living designer to ever be given a retrospective at the renowned Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her work exerts an extraordinary influence over succeeding generations of designers and is a major point of reference for all those wishing to explore the place of fashion in contemporary culture. The 14 essays in this collection, written by eminent fashion theorists from around the world, ask what is the relationship of Kawakubo's work to art, philosophy and architecture, and ultimately illustrate how Kawakubo's creative output allows us to understand the very notion of fashion itself.

Western fashion has been widely appreciated and consumed in Tokyo for decades, but since the mid-1990s Japanese youth have been playing a crucial role in forming their own unique fashion communities and producing creative styles which have had a major impact on fashion globally. Geographically and stylistically defined, subcultures such as Lolita in Harajuku, Gyaru and Gyaru-o in Shibuya, Age-jo in Shinjuku, and Mori Girl in Kouenji, reflect the affiliation and identities of their members, and have often blurred the boundary between professionals and amateurs for models, photographers, merchandisers and designers. Based on insightful ethnographic fieldwork in Tokyo, Fashioning Japanese Subcultures is the first theoretical and analytical study on Japan's contemporary youth subcultures and their stylistic expressions. It is essential reading for students, scholars and anyone interested in fashion, sociology and subcultures.

Orientalism is a central factor within the fashion system, both subtle and overt. In this groundbreaking book, the author shows the extent of the influence that the Orient had, and continues to have, on fashion. Our concept of Western fashion is unthinkable without it, whether in terms of the growth of the cotton industry or of garments we take for granted, such as the dressing gown. From pre-modern to contemporary times, this book demonstrates that, in the realms of fashion, the Orient is not simply a construction or a fascination of the imperial West with its eastern other. Rather, it reveals the extent of cross-pollination, exchange and multiple translation that has taken place between East and West for the last 500 years. Exploring topics including Chinoiserie, masquerade, bohemianism, Japonisme, the "de-Orientalization" of the Orient, perfume and the birth of couture, Fashion and Orientalism is an essential read for students and scholars of fashion, cultural studies and history.

Examines the challenges of fashion from the nineteenth-century to the present day, from decolonisation to sustainability.

This ethnography of Asian American designers in New Yorks fashion industry explores their relations to the garment workers who produce their goods and to Asianness as a fashionable commodity.

For at least two centuries, fashion and art have maintained a competitive love-hate relationship. Both fashion and art construct imaginary worlds, and use a language of style to invigorate beliefs, perceptions and ideas. Until now the crossovers of fashion and art have received only scattered treatment and suffered from a dearth of theorization. As an attempt to theorize the area, this collection of new and updated essays is the most well-rounded and authoritative to date. Some of the world's foremost scholars in the field are assembled here to explore the art-fashion nexus in numerous ways: from aesthetics and performance to masquerade and media. Original and inspiring, this book will not only secure 'art-fashion' as a discrete area of study, but also suggest new critical pathways for exploring their continuing cross-pollination. Fashion and Art is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, art history and theory, cultural studies and related fields.

While much attention has been paid to the making of Paris in the work of writers and artists, little is known about the city as defined and created by the fashion media. Filling this gap in studies of the French capital, this original and illuminating book focuses on how the French fashion press - with its rich conjunction of words and images - has been able to construct Paris as a leading world fashion city.Based in an original analysis of fashion writing and images in contemporary French fashion magazines and newspapers, the book shows how the fashion media have been central to the consecration of the city of Paris on the fashion map, as well as its celebration in the collective imaginary. Agnes Rocamora explores, for example, the figures of 'la Parisienne' and 'la passante' (the female passer by), and the presence of the Eiffel tower in fashion visuals. She gives attention to the continuum between the French journalistic discourse and that of cultural forms such as films, paintings and literature, thus revealing the persistence across texts and time of visions of Paris and shedding light on the production and reproduction of the Paris myth.