Fashion's Double - (Dress, Body, Culture) by Adam Geczy & Vicki Karaminas (Paperback)

About the Book

"Mere clothing is transformed into desirable fashion by the way it is represented in imagery. Fashion's Double examines how meanings are projected onto garments through their representation, whether in painting, photography, cinema or online fashion film, conveying identity and status, eliciting fascination and desire. With in-depth case studies including the film and photography of Nick Knight, Helmut Lang and Terry Richardson, film examples including Pret-a-Porter, music video 'Girl Panic' by Duran Duran and much more, the book analyses the interrelationship between clothing, identity, embodiment and self-representation. Accessibly written for students and scholars, Fashion's Double will appeal to anyone studying fashion, cultural studies, art theory and history, photography and sociology"--

Book Synopsis

Mere clothing is transformed into desirable fashion by the way it is represented in imagery. Fashion's Double examines how meanings are projected onto garments through their representation, whether in painting, photography, cinema or online fashion film, conveying identity and status, eliciting fascination and desire.

With in-depth case studies including the work of Nick Knight and Helmut Newton, film examples such as The Hunger Games, music video Girl Panic by Duran Duran, and much more, this book analyses the interrelationship between clothing, identity, embodiment, representation and self-representation.

Written for students and scholars alike, Fashion's Double will appeal to anyone studying fashion, cultural studies, art theory and history, photography, sociology, and film.

Review Quotes

"Fashion's Double is a welcome addition not only to the growing scholarship in the field of Fashion Studies, but also to other fields such as Visual Culture, Film and Media Studies, Photography, Feminist and Gender Studies. The book shows clearly how different arts and media overlap in a complex circuit with the material and immaterial, yet connected, sides of fashion." --Eugenia Paulicelli, Professor of Fashion Studies at Queens College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA

"Articulate, engaging and profound, Fashion's Double is surely to be essential reading for all students and academics in the field of cultural history of fashion. Exploring representations of fashion in painting, photography, film and internet Geczy and Karaminas expertly navigate fashion's "room of mirrors". Thought-provoking historical case studies and subtle analysis of contemporary visual material make it a joy to read." --Olga Vainshtein, Senior Researcher at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Russia

"Fashion's Double is an outstanding contribution to the fast growing field of transdisciplinary literature on fashion theory. While the book deals primarily with fashion at the end of the twentieth century and into the new millennium it does offer a historical framework on the origins of fashion in the West. It is a clever, brilliantly researched book that draws on the politics of class, sociology and the histories of the image. Importantly, the writing is crisp and without jargon making it indispensable reading for scholars and fashionistas alike." --Brad Buckley, Professor of Contemporary Art and Culture at The University of Sydney, Australia

"This is a fascinating and at times provocative intervention in the field of fashion scholarship, constructed around a series of case studies which move in a historical arc from nineteenth-century portrait painting to online fashion film. The book effectively underwrites the rationale for locating and studying fashion in the context both of the visual culture contemporary with it, and of other academic disciplines." --Pamela Church Gibson, Reader in Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion, UK

"An excellent study not only on fashion as visual culture, but also on what fashion reveals about the social and cognitive role of both representation and imagination. Painting, illustration, photography, cinema, as well as music, are the fields where fashion signs create our "double" world - the world." --Patrizia Calefato, Associate Professor at the Università degli studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Italy

""[CC] This stimulating, sometimes provocative work provides a philosophical speculation of coexisting dualities: real/ideal, artifact/image, permanent/fleeting, static/dynamic, original/copy ... A long analysis of The Hunger Games exposes how even subtle cosmetic treatments of nails and lips were used to identify community affiliation, rebellion, and class conflict. More dualities from the digital world suggest the merging of designer and audience through democratization of elitist fashion that is now accessible to the global masses even beyond the influence of Hollywood mass marketing, thus causing the collapse of geographic style distinctions ... Summing Up: Recommended. All readers." --CHOICE

"...one can learn the history of this long and complicated relationship between image and garment, placing it in context and seeing it for what it is: an inevitably complex and fascinating matter." --Fashion, Society & Popular Culture

About the Author

Adam Geczy is an artist and writer who teaches at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney, Australia

Vicki Karaminas is Professor of Fashion and Deputy Director of Doctoral Research at the College of Creative Arts, Massey University, New Zealand