Fashion Game Changers

Reinventing the 20th-Century Silhouette

Karen Van Godtsenhoven, Miren Arzalluz, Kaat Debo, Karen Van Godtsenhoven, Miren Arzalluz, Kaat Debo

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781350065345
• eBook ISBN:
  9781474280082
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

Fashion Game Changers traces radical innovations in Western fashion design from the beginning of the 20th century to the present.

Challenging the traditional silhouettes of their day, fashion designers such as Madeleine Vionnet and Cristóbal Balenciaga began to liberate the female body from the close-fitting hourglass forms which dominated European and American fashion, instead enveloping bodies in more autonomous garments which often took inspiration from beyond the West. As the century progressed, new generations of avant-garde designers from Rei Kawakubo to Martin Margiela further developed the ideas instigated by their predecessors to defy established notions of femininity in dress, creating space between body and garment. This way, a new relationship between body and dress emerged for the 21st century.

With over 200 images and commentaries from an international range of leading fashion curators and historians, this beautifully illustrated book showcases some of the most revolutionary silhouettes and innovative designs of over 100 years of fashion.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Copyright
• Title
• Contents
• 1 Fashion Game Changers: Reinventing the Twentieth-Century Silhouette An Introduction
• 2 Iconoclastic Visions of the Silhouette: Cristóbal Balenciaga
• 3 Self-taught and Experimental: A New Approach to the Body
• The Inside View — Karin Dillen on wearing Maison Martin Margiela
• 4 Kindred Spirits: The Radical Poetry of Japanese and Belgian Designers
• The Inside View — Liliane Lijn on Wearing Issey Miyake
• 5 The Discovery of Abstraction in Twentieth-century Fashion
• 6 Shadows of the Body
• 7 Cultural Liberation Springing from Physical Liberation: Reception Study of the 1980s Avant-garde
• The Inside View — Isolde Pringiers on Wearing Comme Des Garçons
• 8 More Game Changers
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Photo Credits
• Index
• Acknowledgements