Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival and the Grotesque Body

by Francesca Granata, Reina Lewis (Editor), Elizabeth Wilson (Editor)

Overview

Shortlisted for the Millia Davenport Publication Award.

Experimental Fashion traces the proliferation of the grotesque and carnivalesque within contemporary fashion and the close relation between fashion and performance art, from Lady Gaga's raw meat dress to Leigh Bowery's performance style. The book examines the designers and performance artists at the turn of the 21st century whose work challenges established codes of what represents the fashionable body. These innovative people, the book argues, make their challenges through dynamic strategies of parody, humour and inversion. It explores the experimental work of modern designers such as Georgina Godley, Bernhard Willhelm, Rei Kawakubo and fashion designer, performance artist, and club figure Leigh Bowery. It also discusses the increased centrality of experimental fashion through the pop phenomenon, Lady Gaga.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350248007
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/01/2021
Series:	Dress Cultures
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.15(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Francesca Granata is Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons the New School for Design, New York. She is the editor and founder of the journal Fashion Projects. Her work has appeared in Fashion Theory, Fashion Practice, and The Journal of Design History, The Atlantic as well as in a number of books and exhibition catalogues.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations viii

Acknowledgements xii

Introduction 1

1 Against Power Dressing Georgina Godley 15

2 Fashioning the Maternal Body Rei Kawakubo 36

3 Performing Pregnancy Leigh Bowery 54

4 Deconstruction and the Grotesque Martin Margiela 74

5 Carnivalised Time Martin Margiela 103

6 Carnival Iconography Bernhard Willhelm 119

7 The Proliferation of the Grotesque Lady Gaga 149

Interview Nicola Bowery 161

Interview Georgina Godley 169

Notes 179

Bibliography 198

Filmography 211

Index 212

Editorial Reviews

This is a timely book in that many of the concepts discussed resonate strongly with the current cultural context: gynophobia and fear of the fat feminine body; neoliberalism, corporate greed and the "enterprising self"; and fear of border crossings and the breakdown of cultural categories.” —Morna Laing, "Fashion Theory: The Jourbanal of Dress, Body and Culture"

“The strengths of this book are two-fold, both reframing Bakhtin's theory of the Grotesque body as a tool for the analysis of fashion and also its ability to theorize the very edges of fashion [...] [I]n doing so, Granata does both fashion studies and design history a great service.” —Ellen Sampson, "The Jourbanal of Design History"

“A very welcome contribution to the field of fashion studies, not least through its attention to an aspect of fashion-experimental fashion-that has so far been given little attention.” —Agnès Rocamora, Reader in Social and Cultural Studies at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London and author of "Fashioning the City"

“[H]er work begins to bridge a gap in literature concerned with the intersections of fashion practice and performance art. [...] While Granata's work is both methodologically and theoretically complex it is presented with absolute clarity and this level of accessibility is highly commendable.” —Fenella Hitchcock, "Costume: The Jourbanal of The Costume Society"

“Granata continually reconsiders the grotesque within the contexts of different fields of both culture and academe. Borrowing from psychoanalysis, feminist theory, performance and film studies, she creates a vivid narrative that inspects grotesque corporealities in a variety of cultural forms through meticulous analysis of primary sources.” —Jana Melkumova-Reynolds, "International Jourbanal of Fashion Studies"

From the Publisher

"The strengths of this book are two-fold, both reframing Bakhtin’s theory of the Grotesque body as a tool for the analysis of fashion and also its ability to theorize the very edges of fashion […] [I]n doing so, Granata does both fashion studies and design history a great service."

Ellen Sampson

"This is a timely book in that many of the concepts discussed resonate strongly with the current cultural context: gynophobia and fear of the fat feminine body; neoliberalism, corporate greed and the “enterprising self”; and fear of border crossings and the breakdown of cultural categories."

Morna Laing