Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness [Hardcover]

Caroline Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2003

What do images of illness, vampirism, wounds, and addiction say about contemporary fashion? Contemporary experimental fashion has a dark side, a preoccupation with representations of death, trauma, alienation, and decay. This 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 analyses the work of experimental designers, the images of fashion photographers, and the spectacular fashion shows that developed in the final decade of the 20th 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 centre of the contemporary, and that it voices some of Western culture's deepest concerns.

Editorial Reviews

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.
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Review

"Evans grapples with extremely interesting issues, such as why fashion imagery has become so dark and decadent. Her choice of contemporary fashion imagery - and her juxtaposition of these images with similar themes in art - is brilliant." Valerie Steele, Director of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300101929
• ISBN-13: 978-0300101928
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 9.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,755,076 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitive account of 90s cutting-edge designers, November 10, 2003

By 

Roger Tredre/WGSN (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness (Hardcover)

Caroline Evans has written an important book that explores the work of cutting-edge designers of the 1990s such as Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Viktor & Rolf. The book's subtitle - "Spectacle, Modernity and Deathliness" - sums up the author's focus on the underside of fashion. Evans acknowledges that much of the fashion featured in this book was "economically negligible", arguing that its cultural import is of greater significance. She explores how designers of the 90s consciously or unconsciously explored the dark history of the 20th century through their work, with death, trauma, cruelty, and horror as recurring themes.

Where is this all leading? The conclusions are doom-laden but fascinating. British designers, with their focus on "gothic fashion", may represent the ghost or shadow of rational American designers. Creatively, Evans posits a bleak future for fashion "doomed to ricochet between modernist experimentation and dark despair." In a memorable line, Evans writes: "Now, more than ever, everything new and beautiful seems to arrive already haunted by its own demise." The financial insecurity of many of these designers in their early days may have fuelled their creativity. They were, as designer and teacher Fabio Piras put it, "fashion desperadoes". This book is full of illuminating insights that put fashion design at the core of our culture, expressing our deepest concerns.

Outstandingly researched, beautifully illustrated, and thrillingly authoritative, Fashion at the Edge may prove to be the definitive book on the generation of designers from London and Antwerp who came to prominence in the 1990s.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars gorgeous inspiring book, March 25, 2006

By 

Carrie Grace (Los Angeles, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness (Hardcover)

The photographs, stories of design history and research in this book are phenonmenal. This is a great book to inspire, shock and mesmerize. It is my most recent favorite in my costume research collection.