Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
List of illustrations

Part 1 What is Criticism?

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Aristotle and the origins of criticism
Chapter 3 Talking in private: the Academies and the Salons
Chapter 4 Understanding Taste: The Critic as Qualified Observer
Chapter 5 Charles Baudelaire: the Beginning of Fashion Criticism; The Art Critic of the Salons
Chapter 6 Oscar Wilde and the apostles of aestheticism

Part 2 Reporting Fashion: Overview

Snapshots
Fashion and morality: Leo Tolstoy’s What is Art?
Paul Poiret: ‘sultan of fashion’ – from tradition to innovation
Diana Vreeland: ‘Why Don’t you?’ – the invention of the fashion editor
Christian Dior: the ‘New Look’ and reporting by Carmel Snow
Yves Saint Laurent – a 1970s analysis of ‘The couturier and his brand’
What is fashion irony? Mild sarcasm or feigning ignorance?
Reporting on the Japanese revolution in Paris
Richard Martin as essayist: Karl Lagerfeld reworks Chanel
Being critical about ‘deconstruction’: theoretical approach or ‘le destroy’?
What is a reviewer? – and how can we recognise one?
What gives Suzy Menkes the status of professional critic?
ACNE Paper: the beauty of print, the splendour of the page
How to be a ‘critical’ blogger: Moving beyond the PR Release
Conclusion: where do we go from here?

Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

A concise and comprehensive student guide to fashion writing and criticism, including a wide range of case studies from Antiquity to the present day.

About the Author

Peter McNeil is Professor of Design History at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Sanda Miller is Senior Research Fellow at Southamtpon Solent University, UK, and Associate Lecturer at Istituto Marangoni, London, UK.

Reviews

What a boost for the discipline!
*Dr Richard Read, Winthrop Professor in Art History, University of Western Australia*

This original volume is both timely and valuable. It provides essential background and introduction to fashion writing and criticism past and present while providing sound intellectual direction for its future.
*Hazel Clark, Parsons The New School for Design, USA*

Fashion Writing and Criticism provides an introduction to two crucial words – critic and fashion – that are part and parcel of the way we write and think about dress. The authors have explored these keywords with an admirable degree of clarity and in such a way as to be of benefit to fashion scholars and students alike.
*Michael Carter, University of Sydney*

The chronology and the evaluative discussions on the development of criticism and the snapshots on twentieth-century fashion reporting are valuable to the ways in which authors think about existing and future writing on fashion, particularly from a critical rather than purely descriptive perspective.
*Costume*