Spacewear: Weightlessness and the Final Frontier of Fashion

(Hardback)

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Today, we are living in the New Space Age, where mass commercial space travel is almost within our grasp. This otherworldly possibility has opened up new cultural images of space, both real and fictional, and has caused fashion design and spacesuit engineering to intersect in new, exciting ways. Spacewear traverses this uncharted territory by exploring the changing imagination of space in fashionand fashion in spacefrom the first Space Age to the 21st century. Exploring how space travel has stylistically and technologically framed fashion design on earth and how we need to revisit established design practices for the weightless environment, Spacewear connects the catwalk and the space station. This book draws together speculative fantasies in sci-fi films such as Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the engineered spacesuits Biosuit, and the NASA Z-2 and with catwalk interpretations by the likes of Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Andr Courrges, and Iris van Herpen. While the development of commercial space agencies has led to new concerns for style in garments for outer space that re-think fundamental design principles such as drape, high fashion has experimented with new possibilities for weightlessness that extend far beyond the 1960s vision of Space Age metallic fabrics and helmet-style headwear. Brownie takes the reader on a fascinating journey from fantasy to function and to form, deepening our understanding of this new category of fashion that is prompting new approaches to garment design and construction both on earth and in outer space.

Reviews

If widespread commercial space travel is as imminent as Brownie contends, this book will indeed be required reading for designers tackling the task...Summing Up: Recommended * CHOICE *
Spacewear is a very interesting book which combines dress history and fashion design practice in an unexpected way. A result of interdisciplinary research, Spacewear can be of interest to anyone, and can be considered a valuable read for fashion designers and fashion design students. * Journal of Dress History *
Brownie opens up a new world for fashion designers. For those who aspire to design clothing for alien environments, this is your starting point. -- Sands Fish, MIT Media Lab
Launching an inquiry into the future of dressing, Brownie asks how clothing technologies might evolve in response to microgravity and extreme environments, and how even fashion could be transformed as civilization advances to populate spacecraft and other planets. Through its radical leaps of perspective Spacewear alerts us to impending existential changes in our self-awareness as embodied beings. -- Susan Elizabeth Ryan, Louisiana State University, USA

Author Bio

Barbara Brownie is Principal Lecturer in Visual Communication at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, where she leads online postgraduate study in the School of art and Design. She is co-author of The Superhero Costume (Bloomsbury, 2015) and author of Transforming Type (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Acts of Undressing (Bloomsbury, 2016).