The word “fashion” refers to many things, going beyond the mere clothes we wear, it is indeed a cross-cultural and cross-national term.
Yet it is not so easy to find a book that tackles in an interesting way the world of fashion, touching also upon more obscure topics.
The recently released volume Nordic Fashion Studies (AXL Books) edited by Peter McNeil (Professor of Design History at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, currently Foundation Chair of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University) and Louise Wallenberg (Associate Professor and Director at the Centre for Fashion Studies Stockholm University – a centre devoted to fashion research with staff coming from Sweden and from North America, the UK and other European countries as well), crosses instead various disciplines - including history, film studies and marketing - and geographies, trying to see how fashion shapes different aspects of our lives.
The book looks indeed at how we view our bodies (the size zero issue and the puzzling problem between size labelling and actual clothing sizes are also tackled), how to control our desires and our consumption patterns, offering also insights on how our economic and cultural history is changing and how these changes have an impact on global socio-economic and cultural communities.
Essays included range from Swedish unisex fashion in the ‘60s and the ‘70s and the sexualisation of children in Vogue Bambini (an extremely relevant topic in our society that should maybe also be explored in connection with other fashion magazines) to the military look of 1960s rock musicians.
The most intriguing essays look at imperial aesthetics in contemporary Russia, femininity and beauty practices in Soviet Russia in the ‘50s-‘60s and underwear in an inventory of female working-class clothing from the mid-to-late 1800s.
Nordic Fashion Studies (in case you're wondering, the cover features one of the sinister figures from Lars Nilsson's installation "Game Is Over") will be launched on Tuesday 20th March (6.00-8.00 p.m.), at Stockholm's bookshop Konst-ig (Konst-ig, Åsögatan 124, 116 24 Stockholm, Sweden). Louise Wallenberg and a few of the book contributors - Mary Engstrom, Daniel Koch, Angela Rundquist and Jacob Östberg - will also be at the book launch.
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I know of Peter McNeils work, he is quite good.
Posted by: Secured Loans | March 18, 2012 at 09:22 AM