Couture Culture: A Study in Modern Art and Fashion

From Library Journal

Troy (chair, art history, Univ. of Southern California) here offers the first thoroughgoing examination of the relationship between modern art and high fashion. The book locates the origins of contemporary haute couture in early 19th-century France, opening with the observation that what we now recognize as the international fashion industry evolved from work done by artisans in Parisian tailor shops. She traces the careers of a few savvy figures from Paris, who made the business decisions and original designs that helped to catapult the simple dressmaking trade into an art form. Particularly intriguing is the role couturiers played as art patrons and the way in which they utilized their artistic connections to amass wealth and build their house's cachet. Troy also considers the notion and import of authenticity in a trade demanding multiple copies of "original" designs-an industrial-era irony similarly confronting modern artists. With a wealth of period photographs, trade material, and serials, Troy's book documents the strong affinities between art and fashion and provides keen insight into the lives and social practices of the French upper classes. Recommended for all art, cultural studies, and social history collections.Savannah Schroll, Smithsonian Institution Lib., Washington, DCCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Inside Flap

"Nancy Troy brilliantly demonstrates the parallels and connections that existed between the spheres of high art and haute couture during the years around the First World War. Arguing that avant-garde art was as much subject to the 'logic of fashion' as dress, she transforms our understanding of early twentieth-century Parisian visual culture." --Tag Gronberg, School of History of Art, Film and Visual Culture , Birkbeck College, University of London "This captivating study traces the ways in which early twentieth-century fashion designers negotiated the contradiction between reverence for the original and the need for mass produced copies. Troy deftly shows how the designers' elaborate promotional and legal strategies paralleled contemporary moves in the art world. In a refreshing challenge to traditional disciplinary limits, this book exposes deeper links between the clothing industry and the art market." --Mark Wigley, Professor of Architecture, Columbia University, and author of *White Walls: Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture* "In Couture Culture, Nancy Troy's deeply researched and eloquently argued encounter between modern art and fashion, the 'Readymade' meets the 'ready-to-wear.' The book sheds dazzling new light on the 'logic of fashion' and its paradoxical transformation of originals into copies; works of art into works of industry and back again." --Anne Friedberg, Program in Film Studies and Gradute Program in Visual Studies, University of California at Irvine "Troy has written a stimulating account of an important episode in the history of early 20th-century haute couture: fashion designer Paul Poiret's (ultimately) futile attempt to secure a place for himself at the heart of modern culture. Torn between the craft traditions of France and the American mass market, Poiret becomes an exemplary figure in Troy's study. Her excellent research and intelligent analysis yield some fascinating results, not the least of which is a convincing new context for Marcel Duchamp's Readymades. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in high modernism and its discontents." --Kenneth Silver, Professor of Fine Arts, New York University