Download or read book Thinking Through Fashion written by Agnès Rocamora and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learning how to think through fashion is both exciting and challenging, being dependent on one s ability to critically engage with an array of theories and concepts. This is the first book designed to accompany readers through the process of thinking through fashion. It aims to help them grasp both the relevance of social and cultural theory to fashion, dress, and material culture and, conversely, the relevance of those fields to social and cultural theory. It does so by offering a guide through the work of selected major thinkers, introducing their concepts and ideas. Each chapter is written by an expert contributor and is devoted to a key thinker, capturing the significance of their thought to the understanding of the field of fashion, while also assessing the importance of this field for a critical engagement with these thinkers ideas. This is a guide and reference for students and scholars in the fields of fashion, dress and material culture, the creative industries, sociology, cultural history, design and cultural studies."
Download or read book Fashion Thinking written by Fiona Dieffenbacher and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AVA Academia's Course Reader titles are designed to support visual arts students throughout the lifetime of an undergraduate degree. Packed with examples from students and professionals and fully illustrated with clear diagrams and inspiring imagery, they offer an essential exploration of the subject. Students often struggle to develop their own style and approach to design. While the design process is fundamental to the way all fashion designers work, there is no right or wrong method: each emerging designer must find their own authentic process. Fashion Thinking establishes key approaches to design and enables this process of discovery. Nine student projects form the core of the book, representing a diverse range of strategies at each key stage of the design cycle. By following each throughout their various stages of development, these examples offer a unique and inspiring insight into the thinking behind a final collection.
Download or read book Fashion Culture and Identity written by Fred Davis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do our clothes say about who we are or who we think we are? How does the way we dress communicate messages about our identity? Is the desire to be "in fashion" universal, or is it unique to Western culture? How do fashions change? These are just a few of the intriguing questions Fred Davis sets out to answer in this provocative look at what we do with our clothes—and what they can do to us. Much of what we assume to be individual preference, Davis shows, really reflects deeper social and cultural forces. Ours is an ambivalent social world, characterized by tensions over gender roles, social status, and the expression of sexuality. Predicting what people will wear becomes a risky gamble when the link between private self and public persona can be so unstable.
Download or read book Fashion Theory written by Malcolm Barnard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-03 with total page 860 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader brings together and presents a wide range of essays on fashion theory that will engage and inform both the general reader and the specialist student of fashion. From apparently simple and accessible theories concerning what fashion is to seemingly more difficult or challenging theories concerning globalisation and new media, this collection contextualises different theoretical approaches to identify, analyse and explain the remarkable diversity, complexity and beauty of what we understand and experience every day as fashion and clothing. This second edition contains entirely new sections on fashion and sustainability, fashion and globalisation, fashion and digital/social media and fashion and the body/prosthesis. It also contains updated and revised sections on fashion, identity and difference, and on fashion and consumption and fashion as communication. More specifically, the section on identity and difference has been updated to include contemporary theoretical debates surrounding Islam and fashion, and LGBT+ communities and fashion and the section on consumption now includes theories of 'prosumption'. Each section has a specialist and dedicated Editor's Introduction which provides essential conceptual background, theoretical contextualisation and critical summaries of the readings in each section. Bringing together the most influential and ground breaking writers on fashion and exposing the ideas and theories behind what they say, this unique collection of extracts and essays brings to light the presuppositions involved in the things we all think and say about fashion. This second edition of Fashion Theory: A Reader is a timeless and invaluable resource for both the general reader and undergraduate students across a range of disciplines including sociology, cultural studies and fashion studies.
Download or read book Adorned in Dreams written by Elizabeth Wilson and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Adorned in Dreams was first published in 1985, Angela Carter described the book as "the best I have read on the subject, bar none." From haute couture to haberdashery, "deviant" dress to Dior, Elizabeth Wilson traces the social and cultural history of fashion and its complex relationship to modernity. She also discusses fashion's vociferous opponents, from the "dress reform" movement to certain strands of feminism. Wilson delights in the power of fashion to mark out identity or subvert it. This brand new edition of her book follows recent developments to bring the story of fashionable dress up to date, exploring the grunge look inspired by bands like Nirvana, the "boho chic" of the mid 90's, retro-dressing, and the meanings of dress from the veil to soccer player David Beckham's pink-varnished toenails.
Download or read book Fashion ology written by Yuniya Kawamura and published by Berg. This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a concise and much-needed introduction to the sociology of fashion. Most studies of fashion do not make a clear distinction between clothing and fashion. Kawamura argues that clothing is a tangible material product whereas fashion is a symbolic cultural product. She debunks the myth of the genius designer and explains, provocatively, that fashion is not about clothes but is a belief. There is an institutional structure, ignored by many fashion theorists, that has shaped and produced the fashion phenomenon. Kawamura further shows how the structural nature of the fashion system works to legitimize designers creativity and can make them successful. Newer fashion cities, such as Milan and New York, are the product of the fashion system that originated in Paris. Without that systemic structure, fashion culture would not exist. Fashion-ology provides a big picture approach that focuses on the social process behind fashion and its perpetuation.
Download or read book Fashion Philosophy for Everyone written by Jessica Wolfendale and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you just can't decide what to wear, this enlightening guide will lead you through the diverse and sometimes contradictory aspects of fashion in a series of lively, entertaining and thoughtful essays from prominent philosophers and writers. A unique and enlightening insight into the underlying philosophy behind the power of fashion Contributions address issues in fashion from a variety of viewpoints, including aesthetics, the nature of fashion and fashionability, ethics, gender and identity politics, and design Includes a foreword by Jennifer Baumgardner, feminist author, activist and cultural critic, editor of Ms magazine (1993-7) and regular contributor to major women's magazines including Glamour and Marie-Claire
Download or read book Thinking Through Cultures written by Richard A. Shweder and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shweder calls for exploration of the human mind--and of one's own mind--by thinking through the ideas and practices of other peoples and their cultures. He examines evidence of cross-cultural similarities and differences in mind, self, emotion, and morality with special reference to the cultural psychology of a traditional Hindu temple town in India.
Download or read book Thinking Through Craft written by Glenn Adamson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an introduction to the way that artists working in all media think about craft. Workmanship is key to today's visual arts, when high 'production values' are becoming increasingly commonplace. Yet craft's centrality to contemporary art has received little serious attention from critics and historians. Dispensing with clichéd arguments that craft is art, Adamson persuasively makes a case for defining craft in a more nuanced fashion. The interesting thing about craft, he argues, is that it is perceived to be 'inferior' to art. The book consists of an overview of various aspects of this second-class identity - supplementarity, sensuality, skill, the pastoral, and the amateur. It also provides historical case studies analysing craft's role in a variety of disciplines, including architecture, design, contemporary art, and the crafts themselves.
Download or read book Thinking Through Material Culture written by Carl Knappett and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-11-24 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material culture surrounds us and yet is habitually overlooked. So integral is it to our everyday lives that we take it for granted. This attitude has also afflicted the academic analysis of material culture, although this is now beginning to change, with material culture recently emerging as a topic in its own right within the social sciences. Carl Knappett seeks to contribute to this emergent field by adopting a wide-ranging interdisciplinary approach that is rooted in archaeology and integrates anthropology, sociology, art history, semiotics, psychology, and cognitive science. His thesis is that humans both act and think through material culture; ways of knowing and ways of doing are ingrained within even the most mundane of objects. This requires that we adopt a relational perspective on material artifacts and human agents, as a means of characterizing their complex interdependencies. In order to illustrate the networks of meaning that result, Knappett discusses examples ranging from prehistoric Aegean ceramics to Zande hunting nets and contemporary art. Thinking Through Material Culture argues that, although material culture forms the bedrock of archaeology, the discipline has barely begun to address how fundamental artifacts are to human cognition and perception. This idea of codependency among mind, action, and matter opens the way for a novel and dynamic approach to all of material culture, both past and present.
Download or read book The Language of Fashion written by Roland Barthes and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roland Barthes was one of the most widely influential thinkers of the 20th Century and his immensely popular and readable writings have covered topics ranging from wrestling to photography. The semiotic power of fashion and clothing were of perennial interest to Barthes and The Language of Fashion - now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series - collects some of his most important writings on these topics. Barthes' essays here range from the history of clothing to the cultural importance of Coco Chanel, from Hippy style in Morocco to the figure of the dandy, from colour in fashion to the power of jewellery. Barthes' acute analysis and constant questioning make this book an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the cultural power of fashion.
Download or read book Fashioning Identity written by Maria Mackinney-Valentin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-09 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We dress to communicate who we are, or who we would like others to think we are, telling seductive fashion narratives through our adornment. Yet, today, fashion has been democratized through high-low collaborations, social media and real-time fashion mediation, complicating the basic dynamic of identity displays, and creating tension between personal statements and social performances. Fashioning Identity explores how this tension is performed through fashion production and consumption,by examining a diverse series of case studies - from ninety-year old fashion icons to the paradoxical rebellion in 'normcore', and from soccer jerseys in Kenya to heavy metal band T-shirts in Europe. Through these cases, the role of time, gender, age memory, novelty, copying, the body and resistance are considered within the context of the contemporary fashion scene. Offering a fresh approach to the subject by readdressing Fred Davis' seminal concept of 'identity ambivalence' in Fashion, Culture and Identity (1992), Mackinney-Valentin argues that we are in an epoch of 'status ambivalence', in which fashioning one's own identity has become increasingly complicated.
Download or read book Men s Style written by Russell Smith and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men’s Style is a personal and knowledgeable compendium of tasteful advice for the thinking man on how to dress and shop for clothes in a world of conflicting fashion imperatives. This sophisticated and witty book by the popular Globe and Mail columnist combines nuggets of history and the sociology of masculine attire with a practical and supremely useful guide to achieving an elegant and affordable wardrobe for work and play. In chapters and amusing sidebars on shoes, suits, shirts and ties, formal and casual wear, underwear and swimsuits, cufflinks and watches, coats, hats, and scarves, Russell Smith steers a confident course between the hazards of blandness and vulgarity to articulate a philosophy of dress that can take you anywhere. He tells you what the rules are for looking the part at the office, a formal function, or the hippest party, and when you can toss those rules aside. Men’s Style is supplemented throughout with fifty black-and-white illustrations and diagrams by illustrator Edwin Fotheringham.
Download or read book Overdressed written by Elizabeth L. Cline and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Overdressed does for T-shirts and leggings what Fast Food Nation did for burgers and fries.” —Katha Pollitt Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. Stores ranging from discounters like Target to traditional chains like JCPenny now offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. And we have little reason to keep wearing and repairing the clothes we already own when styles change so fast and it’s cheaper to just buy more. Cline sets out to uncover the true nature of the cheap fashion juggernaut. What are we doing with all these cheap clothes? And more important, what are they doing to us, our society, our environment, and our economic well-being?
Download or read book Experimental Fashion written by Francesca Granata and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Millia Davenport Publication Award 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.
Download or read book Thinking Through Systems Thinking written by Ion Georgiou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Systemicity is receiving wider attention thanks to its evident paradox. On the one hand, it occurs as a problem with complex symptoms. On the other, it is sought after as an approach for dealing with the non-linear reality of the world. At once problem and prize, systemicity continues to confound. This book details the mechanics of this paradox as they arise from human epistemological engagement with the world. Guided by an original analysis of the fundamental idea of emergent property, Thinking Through Systems Thinking uncovers the distinct significance, but also incompleteness, of the systems approach as a theory of human epistemological engagement. The incompleteness is treated through a non-eclectic interdisciplinary investigation which meets ten distinctly developed criteria required of any potential interdisciplinary partner to systems thinking. There results a theory of knowledge – an epistemology - which is systemic in both senses of the term: it belongs to the general systems movement, and it is systemically structured. The systems movement is thus offered a distinct epistemological voice which can compete on equal ground with other philosophical/epistemological positions. In true systemic fashion, this theory of knowledge also offers methodological, ethical, and existential implications.
Download or read book The Artist s Way written by Julia Cameron and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-03-04 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example — The Artist’s Way proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone’s got it."—The New York Times "Morning Pages have become a household name, a shorthand for unlocking your creative potential"—Vogue Over four million copies sold! Since its first publication, The Artist's Way phenomena has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron’s most vital tools for creative recovery – The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a “Creative Cluster” of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors. A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.
