About this item
Shortlisted for the Millia Davenport Publication Award.. Experimental Fashion traces the proliferation of the grotesque and carnivalesque within contemporary fashion and the close relation between fashion and performance art, from Lady Gaga's raw meat dress to Leigh Bowery's performance style. The book examines the designers and performance artists at the turn of the 21st century whose work challenges established codes of what represents the fashionable body. These innovative people, the book argues, make their challenges through dynamic strategies of parody, humour and inversion. It explores the experimental work of modern designers such as Georgina Godley, Bernhard Willhelm, Rei Kawakubo and fashion designer, performance artist, and club figure Leigh Bowery.
About the Author
Francesca Granata is Director of the MA Fashion Studies and Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons School of Design, The New School.
She is founder and editor of the nonprofit journal Fashion Projects: On Art, Fashion, and Visual Culture ( fashionprojects.org ) .She holds a PhD from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Her research centers on twentieth century and contemporary visual and material culture, with a focus on fashion history and theory, gender and performance studies. She has published in Fashion Theory, Fashion Practice, and in the Journal of Design History.
Her monograph Experimental Fashion: Carnival, Performance Art, and the Grotesque Body Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival, and the Grotesque Body discusses designers and performers such as Rei Kawakubo, Leigh Bowery, and Bernhard Willhelm, whose work challenges established codes of what represents the fashionable body and gender norms.
