From Publishers Weekly
An academic treatise that's beautiful enough to be a coffee table book, Evans's study argues that during the 1990s avant garde fashion was "permeated by images of death, disease and dereliction." Evans consciously focuses her work on one thread of the fashion world: the edgy costumes of designers like Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Hussein Chalayan and Viktor & Rolf. Theoretically, however, she recognizes no boundaries: her treatise incorporates the disparate works of Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, T.S. Eliot, Karl Marx, Elizabeth Wilson, Simone de Beauvoir and many, many others. The result is a complex and provocative text, one that displays both the substantial intellect and practical curiosity of its author.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Book Description
Recent experimental fashion has a dark side, a preoccupation with representations of death, trauma, alienation, and decay. This intriguing book looks closely at this strand of fashion design in the 1990s, exploring what its disturbing themes tell us about consumer culture and contemporary anxieties. Caroline Evans analyzes the work of experimental designers, the images of fashion photographers, and the spectacular fashion shows that developed in the final decade of the twentieth century to arrive at a new understanding of fashion's dark side and what it signifies. Fashion at the Edge considers a range of cutting-edge contemporary fashion in unprecedented depth and detail, including the work of such current designers as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and Viktor & Rolf. Contrasting images by photographers like Steven Meisel, Nick Knight, and Juergen Teller are also reviewed. Drawing on diverse perspectives from Marx to Walter Benjamin, Evans shows that fashion stands at the very center of the contemporary, and that it voices some of Western culture's deepest concerns.
