Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness

Experimental fashion has a dark side, with a preoccupation with representations of death, trauma, alienation, and decay. This seminal publication explores cutting-edge fashion in the 1990s, revealing what its disturbing themes tell us about consumer culture and contemporary anxieties. Caroline Evans analyzes the work of innovative designers, fashion photographers, and fashion shows to arrive at a new understanding of fashion's dark side and what it signifies.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 334 pages
Publication date: 02 May 2023
Publisher: Yale University Press

Experimental fashion has a darker side, with a preoccupation with representations of death, trauma, alienation, and decay. This seminal publication offers an unexpected discussion of cutting-edge fashion in the 1990s, exploring what its disturbing themes tell us about consumer culture and contemporary anxieties. Caroline Evans analyzes the work of innovative designers, the images of fashion photographers, and the spectacular fashion shows that developed in the final decade of the twentieth century to arrive at a new understanding of fashion's dark side and what it signifies.

Fashion at the Edge delves into a range of groundbreaking fashion in unparalleled depth and detail, encompassing the work of such designers as John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and Viktor & Rolf, as well as photographers such as Steven Meisel, Nick Knight, and Juergen Teller. Drawing on diverse perspectives from Marx to Walter Benjamin, Evans demonstrates that fashion stands at the very center of the contemporary, and that it voices some of Western cultures deepest concerns.

Dimension: 279 x 229 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780300270952
Edition number: 2 Revised edition