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CAMP: Notes on Fashion

CAMP: Notes on Fashion

Current price: $50.00
Publication Date: May 28th, 2019
Publisher:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN:
9781588396686
Pages:
346

Description

What is "camp"? Drawing from Susan Sontag’s seminal essay, this striking volume explores its meaning and its expression in fashion from its origins to today

“[An] amazing catalogue. . . . Extraordinary.”—Christiane Amanpour, CNN

Although an elusive concept, “camp” can be found in most forms of artistic expression, revealing itself through an aesthetic of deliberate stylization. Fashion is one of the most overt and enduring conduits of the camp aesthetic. As a site for the playful dynamics between high art and popular culture, fashion both embraces and expresses such camp modes of enactment as irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration.
 
Drawing from Susan Sontag’s seminal essay “Notes on Camp,” the book explores how fashion designers have used their métier as a vehicle to engage with the camp aesthetic in compelling, humorous, and sometimes incongruous ways. As a sartorial manifestation of the camp sensibility, this thought-provoking publication contributes new theoretical and conceptual insights into the camp canon through texts and images. Stunning new photography by Johnny Dufort highlights works by such fashion designers as Virgil Abloh, Thom Browne, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Alessandro Michele, Franco Moschino, Miuccia Prada, Richard Quinn, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeremy Scott, Anna Sui, Gianni Versace, and Vivienne Westwood.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(05/06/19–09/23/19)

About the Author

Andrew Bolton is the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
 

Praise for CAMP: Notes on Fashion

“a thumb-through of the show’s lavish if cumbersome catalog excited me.”—Roberta Smith, New York Times

“Featuring about 200 objects, both fine art and fashion, Camp: Notes on Fashion will trace the origins of the subject from the 17th century, specifically the court of Versailles, to the present day, when disruption and duplicity are the common currency.”—Laird Borrelli-Persson, Vogue 

“[An] amazing catalogue . . . extraordinary.”—Christiane Amanpour, CNN

“The catalog is divided into two discrete, mint-colored books, both of which are strapped into a handsome pink leather-bound case. The design is pure confection.”—Alex Weintraub, Los Angeles Review of Books