Patrizia Calefato – författare

Luxury has been both celebrated and condemned throughout history right up to the present day. This groundbreaking text examines luxury and its relationship with desire, status, consumption and economic value, exploring why luxury remains prominent even in the context of a global recession.Using approaches from cultural studies, semiotic research and aesthetics, Luxury presents a wide range of case studies including urban space and new technologies, travel, interior design, cars, fashion ads and jewellery to explore what luxury represents, and why, in the contemporary world. The book will be essential reading for students and scholars across a range of fashion studies, cultural studies and sociology, and anyone interested in the power and allure of luxury today.

Luxury has been both celebrated and condemned throughout history right up to the present day. This groundbreaking text examines luxury and its relationship with desire, status, consumption and economic value, exploring why luxury remains prominent even in the context of a global recession.Using approaches from cultural studies, semiotic research and aesthetics, Luxury presents a wide range of case studies including urban space and new technologies, travel, interior design, cars, fashion ads and jewellery to explore what luxury represents, and why, in the contemporary world. The book will be essential reading for students and scholars across a range of fashion studies, cultural studies and sociology, and anyone interested in the power and allure of luxury today.

The book highlights how the signs of fashion showcase stories, hybridations, forms of feeling, from the classics of fashion in cinema, to fashion as cultural tradition in the global world, to digital media. Based on a strong socio-semiotic method (Barthes, The Language of Fashion is the main reference), the book crosses some of the main aspects of the contemporary culture of the clothed body: from time and space, to gender, to fashion as cultural translation, to the narratives included in the media convergence of our age. According to Jurji Lotman, fashion introduces the dynamic principle into seemingly inert spheres of the everyday. Fashion’s unexpected function of overturning received meaning is conveyed through its collocation within the dynamic storehouse of what Lotman calls the “sphere of the unpredictable.” In this horizon, the concept of fashion as a worldly system of sense (Benjamin) generates different “worlds” through its signs.

Dress is everywhere imbued with symbols that reflect different meanings in different contexts. This compelling book convincingly demonstrates how clothing is analogous to a working language and is similarly underpinned by deeper meanings and philosophies.From tattoos and mini-skirts, to skin decoration, makeup and hair, Calefato unpicks the multiple functions of modern dress. Exploring intriguing commonalities - for example, between tattooed Egyptian mummies of 2000 BC and modern subcultural styles - Calefato considers the psychological, cultural, spiritual and symbolic significances at play in what she aptly labels 'body cartography'. What we wear is a vehicle for the (often contentious) expression of politics, gender and identity, placing clothing at the root of a complex set of messages, many of which are paradoxical. Clothing may, for example, liberate through the pleasures of masquerade and at the same time 'cage' or control the body. The Clothed Body shows how semiotics can provide a convincing template for understanding dress in a wide range of contexts and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of what we wear.

Dress is everywhere imbued with symbols that reflect different meanings in different contexts. This compelling book convincingly demonstrates how clothing is analogous to a working language and is similarly underpinned by deeper meanings and philosophies.From tattoos and mini-skirts, to skin decoration, makeup and hair, Calefato unpicks the multiple functions of modern dress. Exploring intriguing commonalities - for example, between tattooed Egyptian mummies of 2000 BC and modern subcultural styles - Calefato considers the psychological, cultural, spiritual and symbolic significances at play in what she aptly labels 'body cartography'. What we wear is a vehicle for the (often contentious) expression of politics, gender and identity, placing clothing at the root of a complex set of messages, many of which are paradoxical. Clothing may, for example, liberate through the pleasures of masquerade and at the same time 'cage' or control the body. The Clothed Body shows how semiotics can provide a convincing template for understanding dress in a wide range of contexts and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the meaning of what we wear.