Prêt-à-Porter Paris and Women

In the first critical history of French ready-made fashion Alexis Romano examines an array of cultural sources including surviving garments fashion magazines film photography and interviews to weave together previously disparate historical narratives. The resulting volume - <i>Prêt-à-Porter: </i><i>Paris and Women</i> - situates the ready-made in wider cultural discourses of art design urbanism technology and international policy.<br/><br/>Through a close study of fashion magazines including Vogue and Elle Romano reveals how the French ready-made and the genre of fashion photography in France developed in tandem. Analyses of representations of space women and prêt-à-porter in such magazines - alongside other cultural ephemera such as contemporary film documentary photography and family photographs - demonstrate that popular conceptions of fashion and modernity shifted in the period 1945-68.<br/><br/>By connecting national and personal histories <i>Prêt-à-Porter: </i><i>Paris and Women</i> reveals the importance of the ready-made to broader narratives of postwar reconstruction national identity gender and international dialogue.