Danger in the Path of Chic

During the interwar years, a proliferation of violence encroached upon the glossy, idealistic world of fashion: from the curiously common appearance of dismembered heads in fashion illustration, to seemingly torturous techniques and devices advertised by beauty imagery, even extending to garments designed to look assaulted and destroyed. Danger in the Path of Chic brings this disturbing imagery to light for the first time, proposing new directions for historians of fashion, violence and culture in the interwar years. Concentrating on London, Paris and New York as fashion centres and political allies, the volume explores why horror manifested itself in this way, at this time, and in a sphere that is usually perceived as being built on fantasy and escape. In doing so, Danger in the Path of Chic situates fashion within the very real social, psychological, economic and political traumas of the period.

Lucy Moyse Ferreira is Lecturer in Fashion Media and Digital Innovation at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK.

List of Illustrations Introduction Chapter One: Assault Beauty Doctoring: Advertising Violence and Femininity Colour: The Assault of Modernity Fighting Back: Elsa Schiaparelli Chapter Two: Fragmentation Dividing the Mind and Body Fragmented Modernity in the City Beauty, Art, and the Isolated Eye The Classical versus Fragmented Body Chapter Three: Eroticism Exploring Eroticism Fashion, Femininity, and Fetishism Eroticising the Body Chapter Four: Absence Fashion and Mourning Sinister Shadows Death on the Body Conclusion Bibliography Index