Overview
Valerie Steele begins by discussing the impact of the Second World War on the international fashion system, explaining, for example, how the success of Christian Dior's 'New Look' was the result of sweeping social and economic changes that included a shift from the atelier to the global corporate conglomerate. In the '50s, Steele argues, developments in the world of fashion were influenced by sexual politics and the anxieties associated with the Cold War: social conformity and gender stereotypes led to such phenomena as 'wife dressing' and 'the man in the gray flannel suit.'Steele traces the fashion revolution of the '60s, which smashed both social and sartorial rules as 'swinging London' inaugurated its own new dictatorship of youth. She describes the rise of the women's movement and the hippies' anti-fashion sentiment, which ushered in a new freedom of choice in the '70s, 'the decade that taste forgot.'
She finds that the '80s, often described as 'the decade of greed,' was actually a more complicated period, during which Calvin Klein jeans as well as suits by Armani became notorious yuppie status symbols. And she shows that the fashions of the '90s, emphatically post-modernist, have repeatedly returned to the themes of retro, ethno, and techno styles.
Synopsis
Valerie Steele begins by discussing the impact of the Second World War on the international fashion system, explaining, for example, how the success of Christian Dior's 'New Look' was the result of sweeping social and economic changes that included a shift from the atelier to the global corporate conglomerate. In the '50s, Steele argues, developments in the world of fashion were influenced by sexual politics and the anxieties associated with the Cold War: social conformity and gender stereotypes led to such phenomena as 'wife dressing' and 'the man in the gray flannel suit.'
Steele traces the fashion revolution of the '60s, which smashed both social and sartorial rules as 'swinging London' inaugurated its own new dictatorship of youth. She describes the rise of the women's movement and the hippies' anti-fashion sentiment, which ushered in a new freedom of choice in the '70s, 'the decade that taste forgot.'
She finds that the '80s, often described as 'the decade of greed,' was actually a more complicated period, during which Calvin Klein jeans as well as suits by Armani became notorious yuppie status symbols. And she shows that the fashions of the '90s, emphatically post-modernist, have repeatedly returned to the themes of retro, ethno, and techno styles.