Berg Publishers – serie

From products we use to clothes we wear, and spaces we inhabit, we rely on colour to provide visual appeal, data codes and meaning. Color and Design addresses how we understand and experience colour, and through specific examples explores how colour is used in a spectrum of design-based disciplines including apparel design, graphic design, interior design, and product design. Through highly engaging contributions from a wide range of international scholars and practitioners, the book explores colour as an individual and cultural phenomenon, as a pragmatic device for communication, and as a valuable marketing tool. Color and Design provides a comprehensive overview for scholars and an accessible text for students on a range of courses within design, fashion, cultural studies, anthropology, sociology and visual and material culture. Its exploration of colour in marketing as well as design makes this book an invaluable resource for professional designers. It will also allow practitioners to understand how and why colour is so extensively varied and offers such enormous potential to communicate.

A comprehensive analysis of Second World War dress practice and appearance, this study places dress at the forefront of a complex series of cultural chain reactions. As lives were changed by the conditions of war, dress continued to reflect important visual narratives regarding class, gender and taste that would impact significantly on public consciousness of equality, fairness and morale. Using new archival and primary source evidence, Wartime Fashion clarifies how and why clothing was rationed, and repositions style and design during the war in relation to past expectations and ideas about clothes and fabrics. The book explores the impact of war on the dress and appearance of civilian women of all classes in the context of changing social and economic infrastructures created by the national emergency.The varied research elements combined in this book form a rounded and definitive account of the dress history of British women during the Second World War. This is essential reading for anyone with an active interest in the field, whether personal or professional.

The Swimsuit: Fashion from Poolside to Catwalk documents the modern swimsuit's trajectory from men's underwear and circus/performance wear to its unique niche in world fashion. It emphasizes the relationship between fashion, media, celebrity, sport and the cultivation of the modern body. This fascinating book provides an historical, sociological and cultural context in which to view how the swimsuit - and Australia, the country that significantly influenced its modern form - migrated from the cultural and colonial periphery to the centre of international attention. In addition, the book offers new perspectives on national histories of the swimsuit and investigates how traditional European fashion centers have opened up to new markets and modes of living, bringing together influences from around the globe. The Swimsuit is essential reading for students, scholars, and the general reader interested in fashion, popular culture, history, media, sport, and gender studies.

The fashion model's hold on popular consciousness is undeniable. How did models emerge as such powerful icons in modern consumer culture?This volume brings together cutting-edge articles on fashion models, examining modelling through race, class and gender, as well as its structure as an aesthetic marketplace within the global fashion economy. Essays include treatments of the history of fashion modelling, exploring how concerns about racial purity and the idealization of light skinned black women shaped the practice of modelling in its early years. Other essays examine how models have come to define femininity through consumer culture. While modelling's global nature is addressed throughout, chapters deal specifically with model markets in Australia and Tokyo, where nationalist concerns colour what is considered a pretty face. It also considers how models glamorize consumption through everyday activities, and neoliberal labour forms via reality TV. With commentaries from industry professionals who experienced the cultural juggernaut of the supermodels, the final essay situates their impact within the rise of brand culture and the globalization of fashion markets since 1990. Accessible and highly engaging, Fashioning Models is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion and related disciplines.