London Fashion Week – 16th to 21st February 2017

This week we are catching on the thread of London Fashion Week (London, 16th – 21st February 2017) in order to highlight some of the exciting titles on our fantastic fashion-related list. Again, they may be titles that you have now forgotten about, or simply just missed.

Get ready, it is quite an interesting and eclectic selection…

First up is the highly collectable Anthology of a Decade: Europa by Hedi Slimane. Previously thought as out of print, we have recently got our hands on the last 10 copies ever that are still available to purchase! The other three volumes of this title are no longer available – so get this one now, while you still can.

Next is the catalogue that was published alongside the recently closed exhibition at The Barbican, London. If you missed the show, there is still an opportunity to buy this interesting book that went alongside: The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined.

If you are interested in how the First World War changed women’s fashion, style and social codes, then this Manchester Art Gallery (MAG) title, Fashion & Freedom,  is one for you to explore further. It accompanied their exhibition of the same name in 2016 (Manchester Art Gallery, 13 May – 27 November 2016).

Fashion photographer Willy Maywald was one of the most important photographers in Paris in the 1930s to 1950s. This next book that we’re highlighting encompasses not only his portraits, fashion shoots, and his photos of the major Paris couture house collections, but also features images he took relating to dance, architecture, travel and city reportage: Willy Maywald: Photographer and Cosmopolitan. Portraits, Fashion, Reportage.

Visions & Fashion: Capturing Style 1980 – 2010, on the other hand, concentrates on the images, the photographs and illustrations of fashion that have ‘been around as long as there has been fashion‘. A large part of the book focuses on print media and the visual communication of fashion labels.

Meanwhile, Art & Fashion: Between Skin and Clothing explores the ‘fluid’ boundaries that occur between skin and clothing, comparing them with the boundaries that exist between art and fashion: ‘Both meet in the space where new visual discoveries are made, where materials are tried out and current concepts of beauty are critiqued.’ 

In Brooklyn Hipster Vero Bielinski takes photographs as she ‘travels through hipster microcosms‘, resulting in her ‘expressive portraits and aesthetically photographed scenes‘ that show ‘the sensibilities of individuals who frantically strive to be unique, yet have been wearing a uniform.’.

Then there is The Transmission of Forms: Roberto Capucci for young designers  which was published alongside an Italian exhibition at Palazzo Morando in 2013. This is where the creations of young designers, finalists in a competition, were presented alongside the clothes that inspired them. 

You may also be interested in Sixties Fashion – which concentrates on the social changes that revolutionised fashion, or in this one – Glam: The Performance of Stylea book concentrating on one of the ‘most instantly recognisable, but critically derided‘ styles of the 20th century.

There are these two titles too, from ex-model and trained fashion designer-turned-photographer Elfie Semotan: Stand-ins – about the preparatory polaroid work studies done well before the supermodels turn up, and Elfie Semotan – which considers her the ‘doyenne of Austrian photography’.

Going much further back in time is Clothing Culture: Dress in Egypt in the First Millennium – an in depth study of the Whitworth’s own clothing collection from post-Pharaonic Egypt, most of which was excavated between 1888 – 1923.

Then not forgetting Reconstruction: Cultural Heritage and the Making of Contemporary Fashion , published alongside an exhibition celebrating the work of seven UK leading fashion designers, whose work embodies elements of their respective pasts. They can be seen to create ‘contemporary garments with narrative‘.

You may also remember last year’s Camden Art Centre exhibition that was curated by ground-breaking fashion designer Duro Olowu exploring the rituals of making that underpin an artist’s work. Copies are still selling of the popular exhibition accompaniment, Making & Unmaking – so maybe it is one to try now, if you missed it?

Into art and textiles? Then take a deeper look at Art_Textiles, which looks at the value of the handmade in the digital age, and collapses the boundaries between art and craft, challenging readers to rethink the significance of medium in art.

Another textiles title, our penultimate selection is from artists Beca Lipscombe and Lucie Mckenzie and their The Inventors of Tradition II . This is a subjective study of the history of the Scottish textiles industry since the 1930s.

And last, but by no means least, we also want to highlight Dis Voir’s Revue: This is Not a Magazine (Special issue 1997 – 2016). Described as ‘an artist’s magazine (not a book)’ it ‘subversively occupies place between art and fashion’. Created by Nicole Tran Ba Vang, it parodies ‘the stereotypes of advertising and fashion, exploring fantasies of a consumer society’.

We hope you enjoy exploring these highlights and click on the links to find out more!

 

 

 

Clothing Culture, Art_Textiles, The New Silk Road,

 

 

Posted on 13th February 2017
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