SEX AND SUITS the Evolution of Modern Dress

Hollander, Anne

ISBN 10: 0679430962 / ISBN 13: 9780679430964

Published by Alfred A Knopf, New York, 1994

About this Item

Front flap of dust jacket has crease, text has two small spots on first blank page, otherwise without flaw. 6.5 X 9.5" 212 pages. From 1994. Dress was equally showy for men and women until the late eighteenth century. After that obvious sexual display in dress was left to women. Hollander shows how modern women adapted men's tailoring and how men are recapturing the color and ornament they long found taboo.

Seller Inventory # 65309

Bibliographic Details

• Title: SEX AND SUITS the Evolution of Modern Dress
• Publisher: Alfred A Knopf, New York
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679430962
• ISBN 13: 9780679430964
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Black & White Photographs
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

From an art historian admired for her brilliance and wit, a provocative argument for the value of modern fashion as sexual expression, with the tailored suit as its strongest example.
Dress was equally showy for men and women until the late eighteenth century, when natural simplicity and understatement on the model of the Classical Greek nude became fashionable, but for men's clothes only. After that, obvious sexual display in dress was left to women - and it came to seem both shameful and esthetically inferior by comparison, despite its variety.
Hollander shows how modern women adapted men's tailoring to their richer scheme of display, making suits do for women what they had long done for men: show their sexuality to be central, serious and interesting, rather than irrational, shallow and dangerous. She shows us, too, how men - now that women have adopted every element of male style - are recapturing the color and ornament they long found taboo, without giving up the potent beauty of tailored suits, which women have made universal.
Richly informed, surprising, entertaining, Sex and Suits gives us a fresh view of what we have long taken for granted, and a new context for thinking about our society.

About the Author

Anne Hollander is an art historian and a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.