The Mechanical Smile: Modernism and the First Fashion Shows in France and America, 1900-1929

Add to My Reading List

Caroline Evans

Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, London, 2013, English

Nonfiction, Fashion Design

9 x 11 inches, hardcover, 338 pages, 80 color and 170 black-and-white illustrations

ISBN: 9780300189537

Suggested Retail Price: $50.00

From the Publisher. In the early 20th century, the desire to see clothing in motion flourished on both sides of the Atlantic: models tangoed, slithered, swaggered, and undulated before customers in couture houses and department stores. This book traces the history of the earliest fashion shows in France and the United States from their origins in the 1880s to 1929, situating them in the context of modernism and the rationalization of the body. Fashion shows came into being concurrently with film, and this book explores the connections between fashion and early cinema, which arguably functioned as what Walter Benjamin called “new velocities”—forces that altered the rhythms of modern life.

Using significant new archival evidence, The Mechanical Smile shows how so-called “mannequin parades” employed the visual language of modernism to translate business and management methods into visual seduction. Caroline Evans, a leading fashion historian, argues for an expanded definition of modernism as both gestural and performative, drawing on literary and performance theory rather than relying on art and design history. The fashion show, Evans posits, is a singular nodal point where the disparate histories of commerce, modernism, gender, and the body converge.

Caroline Evans is professor of fashion history and theory at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, as well as a visiting professor at the Centre for Fashion Studies, Stockholm University.

comments powered by Disqus

Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

Order the book.

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future

By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022

Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.

Order the book.

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People

By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022

Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.

Order the book.

Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

Order the book.

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022

Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”

Order the book.

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

Order the book.