|
 |
|
The Rise of Fashion A Reader Edited by Daniel Leonhard Purdy |
|
$75.00 Cloth |
A remarkable anthology of key writings that parallels the history of fashion with modern life. Writing more than a century before Vogue, no less a figure than G. W. F. Hegel reviewed the fashion of his day and found it wanting because, in becoming outmoded so quickly, it drew attention away from the timeless beauty of the human form. And Hegel is not unique among philosophers in his interest in fashion’s role; for more than 250 years, social thinkers have considered fashion—its transitive nature, the conformity it inspires, the vast range of its influence—as a defining feature of modern life. In The Rise of Fashion, Daniel Leonhard Purdy brings together key writings from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century that explore fashion as the ultimate expression of modernity. Making available many previously untranslated or otherwise unfamiliar works from French, German, and English, Purdy establishes an extraordinary lineage of fashion commentary dating back to Mandeville and Voltaire, which laid the groundwork for the writings on commodity culture of Adorno, Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School. From critiques of aristocratic excess to accounts of fashion’s influence on our ideals of masculinity or femininity, from the figure of the dandy and the eroticism of clothing to the class politics of fashion, this landmark reader includes works by philosophers (Carlyle, Rousseau, Georg Simmel) and social theorists (Herbert Spencer, Veblen), as well as writers (Goethe, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Wilde) and critics (Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos, Simone de Beauvoir). Collecting and contextualizing many of the earliest and most significant formulations of fashion theory, The Rise of Fashion provocatively examines the proposition that to be modern is to be fashionable. “Daniel Purdy provides insight into fashion through the writings of prominent philosophers, social theorists, and scholars in arts and letters. Given the prominence of the authors of these essays, and their obvious concern for fashion, it is most surprising that the study of fashion continues to be regarded with suspicion and thus remains largely on the sidelines of serious academic studies. This book is yet another recent step in alleviating that point of view.” —Journal of Popular Culture “For Purdy, fashion, in a sense, is the essential postmodern gesture: the self-conscious adopting of styles without the specific ideological referents. Overall, the essays selected give an excellent overview of the range of fashion paradigms.” —New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century Daniel Leonhard Purdy is associate professor of German at Pennsylvania State University and the author of The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe. 336 pages | 30 halftones | 7 x 10 | 2004 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Part I. Aristocratic Excess and the Display of Rank 1. "Pride" from The Fable of the Bees (1724) Part II. Public Discourse and the Semiotics of Dress 6. "On Fashion" (1792) Part III. Dress Reform and Gender Masculine Simplicity Feminist Dress Reform Part IV. Idealist Aesthetics 15. "On Art and Craftwork" (1797), "On Objects Portrayed in Visual Arts (1797), and "On Strict Aesthetic Judgments" (1798/1799) Part V. Dandyism 18. "The Dandyiacal Body" from Sartor Resartus (1831) Part VI. Glorifying the Artificial 23. "Beauty, Fashion, and Happiness," "Modernity," and "In Praise of Cosmetics" from The Painter of Modern Life (1863) Part VII. Class Conflict and Status Emulation 29. "Conspicuous Consumption" and "Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture" from The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) Notes |
||
$24.95 Paper