Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> When the photographer Cecil Beaton wrote an account of fashion and the decorative arts in the first half of this century he felt he had to defend himself against the charge of being a ‘propagandist of frivolity’ for the author of such a work will certainly discover that both in England and America fashion is viewed with a jaundiced eye feminine enthusiasm notwithstanding’. At the time of writing 1954 Beaton thought that it was ‘France alone who had laboured to elevate both fashion and les arts mineurs to a degree of perfection comparable with the purity of its literature and painting. Endeavouring to resolve the essential paradox that ‘fashions are ephemeral but fashion is enduring’ he concluded that ‘changes in fashion correspond with the subtle and often hidden network of forces that operate on society – political economic and psycho- logical factors all play their part. In this sense fashion is a symbol.” During the four hundred years covered by this book fashion was a symbol of the power of the monarchy aristocracy and the upper classes dictated by their lifestyle and. moulded by their taste. The six chronological sections of the main text illustrate how the monarchy gradually lost its position as the unchallenged arbiter of taste and instigator of fashion and how the court’s status as the ultimate arena in which to exhibit fashionable dress was eroded. It was a process which did not however diminish the importance of ceremonial at court or the social cachet that continued (MP)