Fashioning London: Clothing and the Modern Metropolis

(Hardback)

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Over the past three centuries, London has established itself as one of the worlds most inventive fashion capitals. City life and fashion have always been intertwined, but nowhere has this relationship been more excitingly expressed than on the streets of London. Fashioning London looks at the manner in which particular styles of dress became associated with this leading international city, ultimately challenging the dominance of Paris, Milan and New York.From the ballrooms and boxing rings of the eighteenth century, through Victorian extremes of poverty and conspicuous consumption, to the flamboyant explosions of subcultural taste that define the capital today, Londoners have constantly offered an idiosyncratic reading of fashionability that has profoundly influenced the nature of style elsewhere. Breward constructs an original history of clothing in London its manufacture, promotion and cultural meaning while showing how issues of space, architecture and performance impinge on notions of fashionability. It highlights the importance of such outfits as the dandy's suit, the dolly bird's mini-skirt and the second-hand ensemble of the punk in forming our understanding of the capital's distinctive character.Drawing on a range of sources, including paintings, street photography, maps, tourist guides, literature, stage and press representations, Fashioning London paints a vivid and definitive portrait of Londons iconoclastic style.

Reviews

'Christopher Breward proves an entertainingly expert guide to everything from Regency Dandies and Mary Quant's miniskirts to Teddy Boys and Vivienne Westwood's safety pins.' James Kidd, Ham High 'Breward leaves no stone unturned in this convincing analysis of the wildly varied style nuances which have gripped the capital over the years.' Khabi Mirza, Drapers 'At once an academic text and a love letter to a city, this is Breward's best book yet. Fashioning London breaks new ground as it weaves together disparate histories and discourses to capture the fugitive pleasures of fashion and urban space.' Caroline Evans, Central St Martins College of Art and Design 'Breward's utterly fascinating book is an exquisite panorama of the city's dandies, spivs and beaus - of both sexes. Time-travelling through two centuries of fashion, this is the ultimate observer's book of London a la mode.' Philip Hoare, author of Wilde's Last Stand and Noel Coward: A Biography 'In his fascinating and scholarly book Chris Breward has refashioned our view of London style, exploring beyond the stereotypes and cliches to produce an elegant and nuanced account of the capital's iconic districts - Chelsea, the West End, Jermyn Street - but also the suburbs and the East End and their relationship to the evolution of modern dress, style and culture. A tourde force' Elizabeth Wilson 'Fashioning London is a tour de force, combining scholarly insight into a series of episodes in the histories of London fashion with a generous sense of the scope of its subject. Drawing on a wealth of literary and visual material, Christopher Breward provides a stylish and sustained account across two centuries, showing a keen eye for the telling detail as well as the bigger picture. The book is in the best tradition of historical writing about London, alive to the city's economic structure and functions, yetkeenly aware of its constantly mutating social and cultural forms. Here the stereotypical figures of metropolitan fashion find their place, from the gentleman dandy of Regency England and the late-Victorian actress, to the dolly bird of swinging London and the student entrepreneurs of Thatcher's Britain. Here too fashion is represented, somewhat unfashionably, not just as a reflection of deeper rhythms of social and economic change, but also as an active agent of progress; a site for the enactment and realization of new ways of living.' Felix Driver, Royal Holloway, University of London 'Its wonderfully detailed accounts of Hollywood's myth-building of London's fog-bound lanes and alleys, the rise of Knightsbridge Green (from plague pit to Forties fashionista's delight) and of London's ascent to the foreground of fashionable life are deliciously absorbing.' The Times (London) 'Pays homage to our finest style-makers from society gels to 1960s dolly birds and Teddy boys to punk rockers. Breward puts everything into a cultural context, covering the development of the rag trade and the influence of architecture on the way we dress as well as the growth of street style, right to the King's Road and Camden Market ... Equally fascinating is the account of a city's developing character.' Time Out 'elegantly written and thoughtfully illustrated' Worth Global Style Network

Author Bio

Christopher Breward is Professor in Historical and Cultural Studies, London College of Fashion.