Fashioning Society

Karl Aspelund

©2009 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast Publications.

Political Coloring

• Fashionable colors tell the story of the Second Empire:– Magenta– Mexican blue– Metternich Green– Bismarck Brown

©2009 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast Publications.

Technology Transforms All

– Steamships, trains, telegraph

– The speed of the spread of ideas increases

– High society becomes migratory

– Style and culture is internationalized

©2009 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast Publications.

Fin de Siècle: Altered States

• The Exposition Universelle of 1889– Electric technology– Colonial and “exotic”

themes– A show of consumer

goods aimed at the middle class

– Paul Poiret, age 10, is mesmerized

• Maison Worth (still) dresses all the courts of Europe

©2009 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast Publications.

A New Empress

• Admirer of Givenchy• Media focus on fashion

and style• Politics prompt switch

to US fashions

©2009 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast Publications.

The Post-Modern Condition• The status of knowledge is

altered in the post-industrial, post-modern age

• The disappearance of “grand narratives”

• The “Ownership” of Culture– Dissolution of Euro-centric

worldview– Rules of society are not

“natural”• Is There a Post-Modern Fashion?

– Post-modern, late-modern, or just pastiche?

©2009 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast Publications.

Trendspotting in the Early Twenty-First Century

©2009 Fairchild Books, A Division of Condé Nast Publications.

The End of History?

• “The End of History”• “The Last Man”• A desire for liberty vs.

the “happiness machines”