Nothing in Itself: Complexions of Fashion

Front Cover
Indiana University Press, 1999 - Design - 302 pages

"This is a wonderful book not 'just' about fashion but modernism,
postmodernity, the arts and popular culture, design and technology, biology
and culturalism. It has a lot to say about ideas in fashion (reflections on
theories of performativity, temporality, difference, repetition,
class/gender relations, and the recessive status of Beauty today, organize
the chapters), and about fashion in ideas. And it's about how we might write
cultural history for a 'posthistorical' time." --Meaghan Morris

Beyond the theatricality of fashion, or its commerce, are other seductive issues that come with dress in its fascination-effect, including the validities, vanities, and deceits of appearance. No more than appearance, "nothing in itself," that fashion has substance, complex and elusive substance, is the thematic of this book, putting another complexion on the subject, the look, and the look that incites the look, in high style, street style, classical elegance or fetishistic chic, from farthingale and corset to power suits and grunge.

 

Selected pages

Contents

I
II
36
III
68
IV
111
V
161
VI
207
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Nothing in Itself: Complexions of Fashion
Herbert Blau
Limited preview - 1999
Nothing in Itself: Complexions of Fashion
Herbert Blau
Snippet view - 1999
Nothing in Itself: Complexions of Fashion
Herbert Blau
Snippet view - 1999

Common terms and phrases

actually aesthetic antifashion appearance Balenciaga Barthes Baudelaire beauty Benjamin body Calvin Klein Cecil Beaton century Chanel chic Christian Lacroix clothes collection color corset costume crinoline critique culture deconstruction designers Dior dress elegance fabric fantasy fashion system feminine fetishism Galliano garment Gaultier glamour gown grunge hair haute couture Helmut Lang hemline hobble skirt Ibid ideal identity ideological issue jacket Jean-Paul Gaultier jeans John Galliano Karl Lagerfeld lace Lacroix Lagerfeld leather less look Margiela merely mode models modern modernist never nineties Paris period photograph Poiret politics postmodern punk quoted ready-to-wear recycled retro runway Saint Laurent sartorial seduction seems sense sexuality sexy sixties skirt social sometimes sort streets style suit taste theater there's Thierry Mugler things tion tradition trans turned University Press Valerie Steele virtual Vivienne Westwood Vogue waif waist wear Westwood woman women worn York Yves Saint Laurent

References to this book

About the author (1999)

Herbert Blau is Distinguished Professor of English and Modern Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. In his career in the professional theater, he was co-founder and co-director of The Actor's Workshop of San Francisco, and co-director of the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York. He is also author of The Impossible Theater: A Manifesto, Take Up the Bodies: Theater at the Vanishing Point, The Audience, and To all Appearances: Ideology and Performance.

Bibliographic information

TitleNothing in Itself: Complexions of Fashion
Volume 24 of Theories of contemporary culture
AuthorHerbert Blau
Editionillustrated
PublisherIndiana University Press, 1999
ISBN0253335876, 9780253335876
Length302 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Design / Fashion & Accessories
Performing Arts / General
Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social
Social Science / Popular Culture
  
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