Danger in the Path of Chic

In this fascinating and highly readable book, Lucy Moyse Ferreira connects fashion to war, politics, psychoanalysis and art, showing how a sense of historical crisis permeated every aspect of fashion in the interwar years, from beauty advertising to haute couture. --Caroline Evans, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK With lively and sophisticated writing, Danger in the Path of Chic offers a valuable transnational study of women's fashion and beauty in the interwar years. Moyse Ferreira's interweaving of psychoanalysis with other art movements reflects the trauma of the time period and how high-fashion provided an avenue by which to process those terrors. --Elizabeth Matelski, Endicott College, USA With her psychoanalytic discussion of the interwar period, Lucy Moyse Ferreira smartly dissects a wide array of media (including art, fashion, literature, advertising, film, and more). Showing how the violence of World War II consistently lingered throughout the Western World, she successfully argues that a threatening sensibility affected women's bodies and their display in public through overt and coded means. Moyse Ferreira manages to weave a number of disparate media to create a coherent and synthesized view of the undercurrent of violence in women's experiences in the dark spaces between the major world wars. --Emily Newman, Texas A&M University-Commerce, USA