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Images on the Page

A Fashion Iconography

Dr Sanda Miller author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:23rd Sep '21

Should be back in stock very soon

Images on the Page cover

This book is a guide to using Art History's theory of iconography to interpret fashion imagery, thereby uncovering meanings related to society, class, culture and the history of dress.

Fashion imagery has existed for hundreds of years and yet the methods used by scholars to understand it have remained mostly historical and descriptive. The belief informing these approaches may be that fashion imagery is designed for one purpose: to depict a garment and how to wear it. In this interdisciplinary book, Sanda Miller suggests a radical alternative to these well-practiced approaches, proposing that fashion imagery has stories to tell and meanings to uncover. The methodology she has developed is an iconography of fashion imagery, based on the same theory which has been key to the History of Art for centuries. Applying Panofsky’s theory of iconography to illustrations from books, magazines and fashion plates, as well as fashion photography and even live fashion events, Miller uncovers three levels of meaning: descriptive, secondary (or conventional) and tertiary or ‘symbolic’. In doing so, she answers questions such as who is the model; what did people wear and why; and how did people live? She proves that fashion imagery, far from being purely descriptive, is ripe with meaning and can be used to shed light on society, class, culture and the history of dress.

This highly interdisciplinary and erudite publication successfully presents an innovative analysis of fashion illustration ... the author manages to shed a new light not only on dress history, but on social and cultural history as well. * The Journal of Dress History *

ISBN: 9781350115330

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 762g

296 pages