Colors In Fashion

Description

Color speaks a powerful cultural language, conveying political, sexual, and economic messages that, throughout history, have revealed how we relate to ourselves and our world. This ground-breaking compilation is the first to investigate how color in fashionable and ceremonial dress has played a significant social role, indicating acceptance and exclusion, convention and subversion. From white used for pioneering feminism to the penchant for black in post-war France, and from mystical scarlet broadcloth to the horrors of arsenic-laden green fashion, this publication demonstrates that color in dress is never straightforward and is as mutable, nuanced, and varied as color itself. Divided into four thematic parts - solidarity, power, innovation, and desire - each section highlights the often violent, emotional histories of color in dress across geographical, temporal and cultural boundaries. Underlying today's relaxed attitude to color lies a chromatic complexity that speaks of wars, migrations and economics.
While acknowledging the importance that technology has played in the development of new dyes, the chapters explore color as a catalyst for technical innovation that continues to inspire designers, artists, and performers. Bringing together cutting-edge contributions from leading scholars, it is essential reading for academics of fashion, textiles, design, cultural studies and art history.

Promotion info

Introducing innovative new research from international scholars working on color, this book is the first to explore the vital role that colors have played in fashion and society throughout history and across the globe.

Author description

Jonathan Faiers is Professor of Fashion Thinking at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK, publishes internationally on fashion and textiles, and is editor of the journal Luxury: History, Culture, Consumption. Mary Westerman Bulgarella is a consultant in the conservation, research, and display of historic textiles and dress, based in Florence, Italy and in Chicago, Illinois. She has been the Advisory Committee Coordinator of Costume Colloquium since its conception.

Table of contents

Introduction Jonathan Faiers (Winchester School of Art, UK) and Mary Westerman Bulgarella (Independent Consultant, Italy) Part 1: Color and Solidarity 1. Color as Theme in the Ebony Fashion Fair Joy Bivins (Chicago History Museum, USA) 2. Purity and Parity: The White Dress of the Suffrage Movement in Early Twentieth-Century Britain Kimberly Wahl (Ryerson University, Canada) 3. Birds of the Same "Color" Flock Together: Color as Expression of Identity and Solidarity in Aso-Ebi Cloth of the Yoruba Margaret Olugbemisola Areo (Ladoke Akintola University, Nigeria) and Adebowale Biodun Areo (National Museum, Nigeria) 4. Contradictory Colors: Tricolor in Vichy France's Fashion Culture Emmanuelle Dirix (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and Antwerp Fashion Academy, Beligum) Part 2: Color and Power 5. Dress and Color at the Thai Court Piyanan Petcharaburanin and Alisa Saisavetvaree (Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles, Thailand) 6. 'Gold and Silver by Night': Queen Alexandra: A Life in Color Kate Strasdin (Falmouth University, UK) 7. Lord Boston's Court Uniform: A Story of Color, Politics and the Psychology of Belonging Deirdre Murphy (Historic Royal Palaces, UK) 8. Yellow is the New Red, or Clothing the Recession and How the Shade of Shame Became Chic Jonathan Faiers (Winchester School of Art, UK) Part 3: Color and Innovation 9. Color Before Technicolor: Colorized Fashion Films of the Silent Era Michelle Finamore (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA) 10. Color as Concept: From International Klein Blue to Viktor & Rolf's "Bluescreen" Michal Lynn Shumate (School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA) 11. Tainted Love: Oscar Wilde's Toxic Green Carnation, Queerness and Chromophobia Alison Matthews David (Ryerson University, Canada) 12. Starlit Skies Blue versus Durindone Blue Anna Buruma (Liberty and Central Saint Martins, UK) Part 4: Color and Desire 13.Rough Wolves in the Sheepcote: The Meanings of Fashionable Color 1909-1914 Claire Rose (Royal School of Needlework, UK) 14. 'Le noir etant la dominante de notre veture ...': The Many Meanings of Black in Post-War Paris Beatrice Behlen (Museum of London, UK) 15. British Scarlet Broadcloth: The Perfect Red in Eastern Africa, c.1820 - 1885 Sarah Fee (Royal Ontario Museum, Canada) 16. Lives Lived: Archaeology of Faded Indigo Kate Irvin (Rhode Island School of Design, USA) Notes Bibliography Index