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The fashion body unbound.

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Shortlisted for the Millia Davenport Publication Award

Experimental Fashion traces the proliferation of the grotesque and carnivalesque within contemporary fashion and the close relation between fashion and performance art, from Lady Gaga´s raw meat dress to Leigh Bowery´s performance style. The book examines the designers and performance artists at the turn of the twenty-first century whose work challenges established codes of what represents the fashionable body. These innovative people, the book argues, make their challenges through dynamic strategies of parody, humour and inversion. It explores the experimental work of modern designers such as Georgina Godley, Bernhard Willhelm, Rei Kawakubo and fashion designer, performance artist, and club figure Leigh Bowery. It also discusses the increased centrality of experimental fashion through the pop phenomenon, Lady Gaga.

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List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Chapter 1 Against Power Dressing: Georgina Godley

Chapter 2 Fashioning the Maternal Body: Rei Kawakubo

Chapter 3 Performing Pregnancy: Leigh Bowery

Chapter 4 Deconstruction and the Grotesque: Martin Margiela

Chapter 5 Carnivalized Time: Martin Margiela

Chapter 6 Carnival Iconography: Bernhard Willhelm

Chapter 7 Fashion and Performance: Lady Gaga

Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

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This is a timely book in that many of the concepts discussed resonate strongly with the current cultural context: gynophobia and fear of the fat feminine body; neoliberalism, corporate greed and the "enterprising self"; and fear of border crossings and the breakdown of cultural categories. Morna Laing, "Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture"

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Francesca Granata is Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons the New School for Design, New York. She is the editor and founder of the journal Fashion Projects. Her work has appeared in Fashion Theory, Fashion Practice, and The Journal of Design History, The Atlantic as well as in a number of books and exhibition catalogues.

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