Dress Code: The Naked Truth About Fashion

Author(s): Mari Grinde Arntzen

ART & DESIGN

Oscar Wilde once wrote, 'Fashion is a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months.' And yet it serves to make us beautiful, or at least make us feel beautiful. In Dress Code Mari Grinde Arntzen asks how and why this is - how we can be enthralled by the fashion world, and at the same time appalled by the politics and practices of the garment industry? This book questions why we h ave such a love-hate relation ship with fashion. Guiding us through the major figures and brands of today's fashion system, Dress Code shows how they shape us and in turn why we love to be shaped by them. The book focuses on everyday, affordable 'fast fashion' brands as well as the luxury market, to show how both ends of the fashion industry exert a powerful force over our lives. It also discusses trend forecasters, the media and the pressures on consumers, arguing that the world of fashion is both a dictatorship and a democracy, directing our shopping habits as well as our appearance.This study explores what happens when we get dressed: why fashion can make us feel powerful, beautiful and original, yet also paradoxically works oppressively, forcing consumers to conform. This book peels off the layers of the world's fifth largest industry, garment by garment, to reveal fashion as a phenomenon, a business and an art. Grinde Arntzen is disturbed by its influence yet sympathetic to our desire - however ambivalent - to be stylish, smart or trendy. Dress Code is both a succinct and thought-provoking look at how the culture of dress dominates everyday life, and a lively and honest account of the pleasures and problems of fashion.

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Product Information

Digging deep into the how and why of fashion, Mari Grinde Arntzen gives us a lot to think about how we consume and use fashion. Will give you a lot to think about as Arntzen discusses various issues in an easy-to-understand way.

Elisa, Book Grocer

Mari Grinde Arntzen is a journalist who writes for Aftenposten and Dagens Naeringsliv and teaches at the School of Fashion Industry in Oslo.

General Fields

  • : 9781780234397
  • : Reaktion Books, Limited
  • : Reaktion Books, Limited
  • : 0.136
  • : May 2015
  • : May 2015
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Mari Grinde Arntzen
  • : Paperback
  • : 128
  • : 0