Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed - Hardcover

Koda, Harold

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1588390144 ISBN 13: 9781588390141

Publisher: New York : Metropolitan Museum Of Art, 2001

Synopsis

Over time and across cultures, extraordinary manipulations of the body have occurred in a continuing evolution of the concept of beauty. This volume features photographs, paintings, prints and drawings showing how fashion has constricted, padded, truncated and extended the body.

About this title

Review:

Throughout history, humans have used clothing and accessories to lift, squeeze, frame and pad the body. In Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed, Harold Koda deftly weaves anthropology, sociology, art history, and haute couture into a lively survey of shifting notions of the body beautiful. Divided into five sections--Neck and Shoulders, Chest, Waist, Hips, and Feet--the book surveys fashion's literal imprint on the body while tracing the history of clothing styles. The long neck may be the only bodily ideal equally prized by all cultures. Young Padaung women of Burma traditionally wore weighted brass coils that pushed down their collarbones and shoulders, creating the illusion of a remarkably long neck. The wide van Dyke lace collar achieved a similar "triangulated" shoulder-line in 17th-century Europe. Fashionable women in the 1830s relied on hugely inflated sleeves—-held up with down-filled or wire-ribbed supports—-to create the rounded dropped shoulder then in vogue. In the "Feet" section, Koda, who remains scrupulously nonjudgmental throughout, juxtaposes the miniaturized "Golden Lotus" bound foot of pre-Revolutionary China with the reshaping effect of today's stiletto heels. The platform shoe was another way of encumbering a woman's gait, whether as a way of keeping her at home (away from sexual temptation) or as a means of showing her off (the courtesans of Japan and Renaissance Venice perched on elevated soles). Men's body-altering fashions also get their due, from sculpted codpieces and male waist-binding to a front-padded shirt by Issey Miyake that resembles a baseball catcher's uniform. Koda's discussions of the historical allusions of avant-garde designers like Viktor and Rolf, Olivier Theyskens, and Hussein Chalayan vividly illuminate an often murky aspect of contemporary couture. Copiously illustrated with works of art and photographs of clothing and undergarments from many eras, Extreme Beauty packs a wealth of information into a slender volume. —-Cathy Curtis

From the Publisher:

This book is the catalogue for an exhibition at the Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 4, 2001, through March 10, 2002. Published in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art

About this edition

• Publisher: New York : Metropolitan Museum Of Art
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1588390144
• ISBN 13: 9781588390141
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168