What the dresses know

An exciting new history of modernism that re-examines the movement through some of its most brilliant female artists.Pioneering women were at the heart of the movement known as modernism. In What the dresses know, Sophie Oliver offers a new account of their radical experiments and extraordinary lives, told through the clothes they made and wore.From a dress Vanessa Bell rescued from the London Blitz to Frida Kahlo’s huipiles and a waistcoat embroidered for Gertrude Stein by Alice B. Toklas, these special objects tell a story of artists seeking transformation. But getting dressed is rarely straightforward. Modernist women used clothes to think through the contradictions of the modern world: the inequalities of industrialisation, the terrible conformities demanded by fascism and racism and the call of feminists, socialists and avant-gardists to act differently and take up new forms of art.What the dresses know is an exhilarating account of women’s bold attempts to make history during years of tumultuous change. A distinctive new voice in cultural criticism, Sophie Oliver uses clothes to explore the challenges modernist women faced – and to understand her own impulses in writing about them.