ABOUT TIME: Fashion and Duration

Super heavyweight glamorous publication as befitting the subject, this stunning book reveals fashion's paradoxical connection to linear notions of time, from 1870 to the present through iconic garments, each paired with an alternate design that jumps forward or backward in time. These unexpected pairings which relate to one another through shape, motif, material, pattern, technique or decoration create a unique and disruptive fashion chronology mixing past, present and future. A new short story by Michael Cunningham, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Hours, recounts a day in the life of a woman over a timespan of 150 years through her changing fashions. Scholar Theodore Martin analyses theoretical responses to the nature of time and fashion, photographer Nicholas Alan Cope illustrates 120 fashions with sublime black and white photography from a classic Christian Dior jacket of beige tussah silk and skirt of black wool, an American woollen black dinner suit recreated from a man?s tail suit, a black silk-synthetic jersey dress with a halter neck embroidered with black sequins, a black jersey dress with cowl neck which becomes a hood, a Versace black metal mesh embellished with clear crystal evening gown, blank Chantilly lace gown embroidered with silk ribbons, a John Galliano cape of navy wool broadcloth, a Louis Vuitton gilet of polychrome silk jacquard in floral motif, an Alexander McQueen white beetled linen dress with huge puff sleeves compared with an American raincoat in dark green wool twill of a similar outline. Quotes from Virginia Woolf throughout from Orlando A Biography assist in our dreamy experience as we turn each sleek page for close-up inspection of these exquisite creations in this exhibition catalogue from The Met, 2020. With resumé at the end, 240 photos, 400 heavyweight pages in dark mock leather black binding, 24.5cm x 32cm.
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