Fashion, Desire and Anxiety

Fashion and the imagery surrounding it allows Western culture to dream and permits a person to experiment with new identities yet, Rebecca Arnold proposes, fashion also elicits fear and anxiety in its consumers. Exploring images of violence, decay and aggression which have become a dominant theme [...]
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Fashion and the imagery surrounding it allows Western culture to dream and permits a person to experiment with new identities yet, Rebecca Arnold proposes, fashion also elicits fear and anxiety in its consumers. Exploring images of violence, decay and aggression which have become a dominant theme in recent clothing design and photography, she shows how fashion uses and abuses the power of wealth, reveals the power plays of sex and display and shows how identities are blurred to disguise and unsettle. Generously illustrated, this provocative book focuses on the last thirty years, from photographic works of the 1970s such as those by Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton, who set models against backdrops of tarnished glamour, to the threatening femme fatales of contemporary designers Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, unravalling the contradictory emotions of desire and anxiety that they provoke.