Radu Stern: Against Fashion: Clothing as Art 1850-1930 (1992–)

“An indispensable guide to the historical avant-garde’s appropriation of clothing as an art form; includes over 100 illustrations and an anthology of artists’ writings.

The late nineteenth-century invention of ‘fashion’ as we understand it today inspired avant-garde artists of the period to create an art form to counter commercial fashion. These artists saw clothing not as a symbol of class distinction but as a force for shaping experience—an opportunity to make things new, to go beyond the traditional boundaries of art. For many artists, therefore, dress design was too important to be left to the fashion designers; they would appropriate clothing as an art form that could break through the traditional boundaries of “pure” art to act directly on life.

Against Fashion is the history of the modern relationship between artists and this ideal ‘anti-fashion.’ Radu Stern traces the development of clothes as art by artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He discusses contributions to the new art form by various artistic movements of the historical avant-garde, including Art Nouveau, the Werkbund, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and the Bauhaus; he examines the work of such key figures as Henry van de Velde, Gustav Klimt, and Sonia Delaunay. The book includes more than 100 illustrations, many in color, as well as an anthology of essential writings and documents by artists and writers of the period, some of them translated into English for the first time. The artists and works examined display a diversity of styles and ideas, but all share the desire to reject the mercantile logic of commercial fashion and replace it with a utopian ‘anti-fashion.'”

Originally published as A contre-courant: vêtements d’artistes / Gegen den Strich: Kleider von Künstlern, 1900-1940, Benteli, Bern, 1992.

Publisher MIT Press, 2004
ISBN 0262194937, 9780262194938
205 pages

Reviews: Robert Radford (The Art Book, 2004), Diana Crane (Modernism/Modernity, 2005), Elana Shapira (Studies in the Decorative Arts, 2005), Roy R. Behrens (Leonardo, 2005), Elana Shapira (West 86th, 2005), Jane Tynan (J Consumer Culture, 2005).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (13 MB)

Anne Hollander: Seeing Through Clothes (1978)

“Seeing Through Clothes is a vivid pictorial history of the changing images of ourselves in fashion. From classical Greek sculpture through the photographs of Avedon, Anne Hollander shows us how art has determined, rather than reflected, our concept of beauty and fashion. She examines the evolution of underclothes, hair as a sexual symbol, the difference between ‘naked’ and ‘nude,’ the role of black clothing, the meaning of mirror images, and how our concept of the perfect figure changes, and thus has altered fashion through the ages.” (from the back cover)

Publisher Avon Books, New York, 1978
ISBN 0380487772
504 pages

Review (Kirkus Reviews, n.d.)
Commentary (Dan Piepenbring, The Paris Review, 2014)
Commentary (Valerie Steele, Artforum, 2014)

WorldCat

PDF (86 MB, no OCR)
PDF (38 MB, OCR’d version via Marcell Mars added on 2014-11-30)