Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women: A Cultural Study of French Readymade Fashion, 1945-68

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Alexis Romano (Independent Scholar, USA)

Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women

A Cultural Study of French Readymade Fashion, 1945-68

Alexis Romano (Independent Scholar, USA)

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English

Bloomsbury Visual Arts
02 June 2022

History of fashion; Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000; Material culture; Fashion & society; Fashion & beauty industries

Series: Fashion: Visual & Material Interconnections

In the first critical history of French ready-made fashion, Alexis Romano examines an array of cultural sources, including surviving garments, fashion magazines, film, photography and interviews, to weave together previously disparate historical narratives. The resulting volume – Prêt-à-Porter: Paris and Women – situates the ready-made in wider cultural discourses of art, design, urbanism, technology and international policy.

Through a close study of fashion magazines, including Vogue and Elle, Romano reveals how the French ready-made and the genre of fashion photography in France developed in tandem. Analyses of representations of space, women and prêt-à-porter in such magazines – alongside other cultural ephemera such as contemporary film, documentary photography and family photographs – demonstrate that popular conceptions of fashion and modernity shifted in the period 1945-68.

By connecting national and personal histories, Prêt-à-Porter: Paris and Women reveals the importance of the ready-made to broader narratives of postwar reconstruction, national identity, gender and international dialogue.

By: Alexis Romano (Independent Scholar USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781350215931
ISBN 10: 1350215937
Series: Fashion: Visual & Material Interconnections
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 02 June 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

List of Illustrations 1. Introduction 2. Critiquing the Everyday: Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women in Magazines, 1945-1968 3. Branding Prêt-à-Porter in the Fourth Republic (1946-1958): Modernisation, Cultural Diplomacy and Industry Debates 4. Displaying Industrial Modernity in 1950s Elle: Readymade Dress, Rational Space and Women 5. Negotiating the Avant-Garde in the 1960s: Stylisme, Industry Debates and Restless Images 6. Expanding the Urban Fabric in the 1960s: Redefined Bodies, Dress and City Space 7. Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Alexis Romano is a scholar of dress, design history and visual culture. She teaches at Parsons School of Design and is co-founder of the Fashion Research Network. She holds a PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art and was the 2020-21 Curatorial Fellow at The Met’s Costume Institute.

Reviews for Prêt-à-Porter, Paris and Women: A Cultural Study of French Readymade Fashion, 1945-68

This carefully researched and illustrated book offers a vibrant cultural history of French ready-to-wear, and of the ways its organization, promotion and representation are intimately connected to conceptions of identity, femininity and modernity. * Agnes Rocamora, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK * This important book responds with both clarity and finesse to a lack of in-depth studies of a key period in the history of fashion: the post-war era, when everything had to be reinvented; and during which the rise of Pret a Porter and its creative proliferation in the 1960s mirrored the upheavals taking place within society. * Geraldine-Julie Sommier, Chloe Archive director, Paris, France * Pret-a-Porter, Paris and Women offers a compelling narrative of national reconstruction and gender identity in the ready-to-wear clothing industry of post-World War II France. Alexis Romano skillfully unpacks the relationship between fashion photography, women's magazines and the city of Paris, and by interpreting fashion's representations through the lens of political theory the author also makes an important contribution to methodology. * Francesca Berry, University of Birmingham, UK *