Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women: A Cultural Study of French Readymade Fashion, 1945-68

by Alexis Romano, Rebecca Arnold (Editor)

Overview

In the first critical history of French ready-made fashion, Alexis Romano examines an array of cultural sources, including surviving garments, fashion magazines, film, photography and interviews, to weave together previously disparate historical narratives. The resulting volume – Prêt-à-Porter: Paris and Women – situates the ready-made in wider cultural discourses of art, design, urbanism, technology and international policy.

Through a close study of fashion magazines, including Vogue and Elle, Romano reveals how the French ready-made and the genre of fashion photography in France developed in tandem. Analyses of representations of space, women and prêt-à-porter in such magazines – alongside other cultural ephemera such as contemporary film, documentary photography and family photographs – demonstrate that popular conceptions of fashion and modernity shifted in the period 1945-68.

By connecting national and personal histories, Prêt-à-Porter: Paris and Women reveals the importance of the ready-made to broader narratives of postwar reconstruction, national identity, gender and international dialogue.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350215931
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/11/2022
Series:	Fashion: Visual & Material Interconnections
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.15(w) x 9.15(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Alexis Romano is a scholar of dress, design history and visual culture. She teaches at Parsons School of Design and is co-founder of the Fashion Research Network. She holds a PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art and was the 2020-21 Curatorial Fellow at The Met's Costume Institute.

Rebecca Arnold is a historian who has held posts at The Courtauld Institute, Royal College of Art & Central Saint Martins. Her publications include The American Look (I2008), Fashion: A Short Introduction (2009), and Avedon Advertising (2019) with Laura Avedon.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

1. Introduction
2. Critiquing the Everyday: Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women in Magazines, 1945-1968
3. Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic (1946-1958): Modernisation, Cultural Diplomacy and Industry Debates
4. Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle: Readymade Dress, Rational Space and Women
5. Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s: Stylisme, Industry Debates and Restless Images
6. Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s: Redefined Bodies, Dress and City Space
7. Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Timely contribution to the field and [a] valuable addition to the complicated puzzle that is the deconstruction of European fashion history's historiographical mythologies.” —Journal of Design History

“This carefully researched and illustrated book offers a vibrant cultural history of French ready-to-wear, and of the ways its organization, promotion and representation are intimately connected to conceptions of identity, femininity and modernity.” —Agnès Rocamora, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK

“This important book responds with both clarity and finesse to a lack of in-depth studies of a key period in the history of fashion: the post-war era, when everything had to be reinvented; and during which the rise of Prêt à Porter and its creative proliferation in the 1960s mirrored the upheavals taking place within society.” —Géraldine-Julie Sommier, Chloé Archive director, Paris, France

“Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women offers a compelling narrative of national reconstruction and gender identity in the ready-to-wear clothing industry of post-World War II France. Alexis Romano skillfully unpacks the relationship between fashion photography, women's magazines and the city of Paris, and by interpreting fashion's representations through the lens of political theory the author also makes an important contribution to methodology.” —Francesca Berry, University of Birmingham, UK

“An important work that should be an essential point of reference for anyone who is interested in the relationship between haute couture and ready-to-wear, or in developments in fashion photography and promotion in the crucial period 1945–1968.” —Costume

From the Publisher