Mod New York: Fashion Takes a Trip - Hardcover

Magidson, Phyllis; Albrecht, Donald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580934986 ISBN 13: 9781580934985

Publisher: The Monacelli Press, 2017

Synopsis

An overview of the turbulent 1960s and 1970s through the lens of fashion, a period when demure silhouettes and pastels exploded into bold prints and tie-dyed psychedelic chaos and ultimately resolved into a personal style dubbed by Vogue the "New Nonchalance."

Mod New York traces the fashion arc of the 1960s and 1970s, a tumultuous and innovative era that continues to inspire how we dress today. During this period, demure silhouettes and pastels favored by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy exploded into bold prints and tie-dyed psychedelic chaos and ultimately resolved into a personal style dubbed by Vogue the “New Nonchalance.”

Accompanying a major exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, this book is beautifully illustrated by two hundred groundbreaking and historically significant designs by Halston, Geoffrey Beene, Rudi Gernreich, Yves Saint Laurent, Andre Courreges, Norman Norell, and Bill Blass, among many others, all drawn from the renowned costume collection at MCNY.

By the mid-1960s, clothing assumed communicative powers, reflecting the momentous societal changes of the day: the emergence of a counterculture, the women’s liberation movement, the rise of African-American consciousness, and the radicalism arising from the protests of the Vietnam War. New York City, as the nation’s fashion and creative capital, became the critical flashpoint for these debates. Authoritative essays by well-known fashion historians Phyllis Magidson, Hazel Clark, Sarah Gordon, and Caroline Rennolds Milbank explore the ways in which these radical movements were expressed in fashion. Of special note is Kwame S. Brathwaite’s presentation of the Grandassa Models and “Black is Beautiful” movement, which is illustrated with photographs by his father, Kwame Brathwaite.

About this title

About the Author

Donald Albrecht is curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York, where he has organized such major exhibitions as Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York, Paris New York: Design, Fashion, Culture, and Cecil Beaton: The New York Years.

Phyllis Magidson is Elizabeth Farran Tozer curator of costumes at the Museum of the City of New York. Her recent exhibitions include Dressing Room: Archiving Fashion, Stephen Burrows: When Fashion Danced, Worth/Mainbocher: Demystifying the Haute Couture, and Notorious and Notable: Twentieth-Century Women of Style.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Brief History
1940-1960
Donald Albrecht and Phyllis Magidson with Sarah Jane Rodman
 
American fashion came of age during World War II. The nation was forced to relinquish its centuries-old reliance on Paris’s fashion leadership when the Nazi occupation in June 1940 isolated the city’s couture houses from the rest of the world. While the New York-based American fashion industry had demonstrated its manufacturing and retailing prowess, it was still not widely recognized for design creativity, and the fashion-conscious public was skeptical of its ability to substitute for Paris’s fashion leadership. Magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue set out to change this perspective and, in the process, helped foster the maturing of the United States as a center of fashion design. Inaugurating special issues devoted to American style, these magazines promoted confidence in home-grown fashion and, most notably, New York designers such as Valentina and Hattie Carnegie, as well as the anonymously designed products of New York stores like Henri Bendel and Bergdorf Goodman’s Custom Salon. Another boost to America’s self-image as a fashion center occurred with the relocation to New York of Parisian couturier Mainbocher in November 1940. In the eyes of American consumers, Paris couture’s acceptance of Chicago-born Mainbocher in the 1930s validated him and, by extension, native talent. The public’s confidence in the nation’s fashion independence was further enhanced by the 1942 inauguration of the Coty American Fashion Critics’ Award. Sponsored by fragrance house Coty, conceived and coordinated by New York-based fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, and conferred by a panel of jurors, the awards (known as Winnies) recognized outstanding interpretations of American fashion trends and made New York designers’ names increasingly familiar to the public.
 
Postwar American fashion continued to evolve into a distinctive style led by New York designers even after Paris’s return to full productivity and high status with the celebrated Dior New Look of 1947. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, designers like Norman Norell, Nettie Rosenstein, Adele Simpson, and Clare Potter masterminded an “American look.” In contrast to Paris’s emphasis on fashion aesthetics and clothing as high art, these New York designers created clothes for the American woman that were informal and easy to wear — dresses, suits, and separates that followed the decade-defining hourglass silhouette, with its fitted body and small shoulders, a cinched waistline, and a voluminous skirt. “American chic,” Vogue announced in 1957, consciously using a French word to acknowledge New York’s newfound capacity to vie with Paris, “is easier to spot than to analyze . . . It is a look and more than a look . . . that grows out of the woman — not on the woman.”
 
The election of John F. Kennedy as President in November 1960 launched not only an era of changes in the political, social, and cultural order, but also in the fashion realm, introducing a stylish First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy. Her youthful beauty and fashionable elegance quickly made her an influential trendsetter for American women and an international icon of a new American sense of style and taste.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Monacelli Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580934986
• ISBN 13: 9781580934985
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160