Rebecca Arnold

Fashion is a dynamic global industry that plays an important role in the economic, political, cultural, and social lives of an international audience. It spans high art and popular culture, and plays a significant role in material and visual culture. This book introduces fashion's myriad influences and manifestations. Fashion is explored as a creative force, a business, and a means of communication. From Karl Lagerfeld's creative reinventions of Chanel's iconic style to the multicultural reference points of Indian designer Manish Arora, from the spectacular fashion shows held in nineteenth century department stores to the mix-and-match styles of Japanese youth, the book examines the ways that fashion both reflects and shapes contemporary culture. Using historical and contemporary examples, it gives a clear understanding of how fashion has developed since the renaissance, while raising questions about its status, ethical credibility, and influence on consumers. The book provides insight into the structure of the fashion industry and how fashions are designed, promoted and consumed, in relation to relevant historical, social and cultural contexts. It is structured thematically, to look at the role and development of designers, the growth of shopping and the different businesses involved in making and selling fashionable clothes. Fashion's relationship to the wider culture is also explored, by considering its representation in art and collaborations between designers and artists, the moral controversies surrounding fashion, and attempts to produce ethical clothing, and the effects of globalisation on the fashion trade. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This is the story of clothes as pictures and of the importance and meanings of the way we picture clothes. Focusing on the rapid changes of the interwar period, fashion is explored as a sensory interplay of images. From illustrations to editorial spreads, and amateur snapshots to Hollywood film, Documenting Fashion considers how American fashion was represented and created by visual culture. The chapters comprise thematic case studies of interconnected images that build to create a discussion of fashion as embodied experience, foregrounding the way that all viewers are also wearers, consuming magazines and other types of images, just as they purchase clothing and accessories. Examining how mediums constructed and impacted the meaning of fashion during the 1920s and 1930s, the book tracks interconnections between technologies that developed in, for example, handheld cameras and Technicolor and Kodachrome color film. Aspects of photography itself are also considered such as hybrid and manipulated images, as well as light, shadow and colour’s impact on depictions of fashion and the body. Newspapers, fashion and women’s magazines such as Vogue and The Delineator are analysed alongside examples from the Black media, including Abbott’s Monthly Magazine and The Afro-American. Conceived as a revisionist history, diverse types of images of Black, white and Chinese Americans are analysed to argue for a more rounded examination of the ways dress, style and self-image were represented in still and moving images and how such imagery created a particularly American vision of vernacular modernity.

This is the story of clothes as pictures and of the importance and meanings of the way we picture clothes. Focusing on the rapid changes of the interwar period, fashion is explored as a sensory interplay of images. From illustrations to editorial spreads, and amateur snapshots to Hollywood film, Documenting Fashion considers how American fashion was represented and created by visual culture. The chapters comprise thematic case studies of interconnected images that build to create a discussion of fashion as embodied experience, foregrounding the way that all viewers are also wearers, consuming magazines and other types of images, just as they purchase clothing and accessories. Examining how mediums constructed and impacted the meaning of fashion during the 1920s and 1930s, the book tracks interconnections between technologies that developed in, for example, handheld cameras and Technicolor and Kodachrome color film. Aspects of photography itself are also considered such as hybrid and manipulated images, as well as light, shadow and colour’s impact on depictions of fashion and the body. Newspapers, fashion and women’s magazines such as Vogue and The Delineator are analysed alongside examples from the Black media, including Abbott’s Monthly Magazine and The Afro-American. Conceived as a revisionist history, diverse types of images of Black, white and Chinese Americans are analysed to argue for a more rounded examination of the ways dress, style and self-image were represented in still and moving images and how such imagery created a particularly American vision of vernacular modernity.

Peace Within for Extraordinary Purpose Ready for more time and less hustle? In a climate dominated by ultra-competitiveness, quick fixes, and inequity, do you crave a meaningful, heart-centered life? Discover how to calm your nervous system, fire up your passions, have your own back, and create space for exceptional work. Holistic leadership coach Rebecca Arnold reveals how you can cultivate a rooted peace within that cascades out for profound, lasting impact. Combining her straight-talking, big-hearted coaching style with over fifty practical exercises, Rebecca fills this journey with vibrancy, humor, and accountability. For those who are done with unconsciously moving through the day-to-day, who've tried everything but can't find calm amid the chaos, The Rooted Renegade is a relatable and inspiring guide to identify what's working and what's not in your life, why, and what you can do about it. You'll learn the framework for rooted peace, including how to - create internal peace through embodied practices, mindful self-talk, and empowered actions; - catalyze existential peace by living in alignment with your legacy and values; and - cultivate relational peace by generating supportive relationships with yourself and others. The tools to unlock rooted peace are simple and transformative. Meaningful impact and holistic success await--what are you waiting for?

Martin Margiela, known for his avant-garde ideas and cult following, became the arbiter of all things classic French Chic. His ability to apply his unique design process to vastly different fashion houses is the hallmark of a great designer. This new edition of Margiela. The Hermes Years has been published with the cooperation of the reclusive Margiela himself, including never-before-published photographs, drawings and testimonies.

This text argues that fashion and the imagery surrounding it give us a vision of Western culture that is both enticing and alienating, flaunting capitalism's euphoric emblems of glamour and success but also representing the underside of modern life. In the 1970s, photographers like Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton set models against backdrops of tarnished glamour; in the 1990s Alexander McQueen and John Galliano created decadent femmes fatales whose sexual allure was equally tempting and threatening. Rebecca Arnold exlores the complex nature of modern fashion, attempting to unravel the contradictory emotions of desire and anxiety that it provokes.

Fashion, and the glossy magazines it inhabits, allow Western culture to dream. It permits a person to fantasize and to experiment with new identities. It flaunts glamour and success. Appearance becomes something to be perfected and admired. These dreams and freedoms, Rebecca Arnold proposes, are contradictory. Fashion and its surrounding imagery elicit fear and anxiety in their consumers as well as pleasure. Fashion has come to incorporate the underside of modern life, with violence and decay becoming a dominant theme in clothing design and photography. Arnold draws on diverse written sources to explore the complex nature of modern fashion. She discusses a range of key themes: how fashion uses and abuses the power of wealth; the alienating promotion of "good" taste; the power plays of sex and display; and how identities can be blurred to disguise and confuse. In order to unravel the contradictory emotions of desire and anxiety they provoke, she never loses sight of the historical and cultural contexts in which fashion designers and photographers perform. Generously illustrated, Fashion, Desire and Anxiety focuses on the last thirty years, from photographic works of the 1970s to the beginning of the twenty-first century.