Titanic & Fashion - by Madelief Hohé (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A richly illustrated fashion journey connecting Titanic-era elegance and film costume with modern design, exploring identity, class, and transformation through clothing.

Titanic & Fashion takes you on a captivating journey through time and style, featuring original costumes from the iconic 1997 film Titanic and rarely seen garments from the 1910s. The book explores a revolutionary era in fashion (1908-1918), when corsets were cast off and visionary designers like Coco Chanel and Lucile redefined modern dress. This period of emancipation, technological optimism, and class division echoes many aspects of our world today.

Combined with works by contemporary designers such as Iris van Herpen and John Galliano for Margiela, the book creates a compelling dialog between past and present. From dreamy gowns to bold statements, fashion becomes a vehicle for stories of hope, struggle, and identity. Aboard the Titanic, these worlds collided - from wealthy travelers in haute couture to migrants in traditional dress - all aboard a ship that came to symbolize both progress and peril.

Published to accompany an exhibition at Kunstmuseum The Hague, Netherlands, between 27 September 2025 and 25 January 2026.

About the Author

Madelief Hohé: As curator of the collection of Fashion and Costumes at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, Madelief Hohé is responsible for one of the largest and most prominent collections of Western fashions in Europe. She studied art history at Leiden, at that time the only Dutch university that offered a specialism in the applied arts. One of her instructors there was Professor Irene Groeneweg, still an eminent specialist in the field of costume history.