“Possibly more than any other cultural artifact, fashion is a sensitive measure of what's going on in society at the time and a widely inclusive one, too ... Fashion is a system that everybody takes part in. Everyone, after all, wears clothes.” This is how Jennifer Croll introduces her first book “Fashion That Changed the World” published in 2014.
In this book Jen reviews 20 influential facets of fashion, sometimes with cheeky commentary, over a span of several hundred years up to the day her book came out. She explores how the lifestyles of royals, celebrities, sports, gays and lesbians, global creativity, the military, music, subcultures, feminism, and art inspire fashion. She investigates how the business of fashion including models, photography, magazines, film, couture, menswear, ready-to-wear and mass marketing, the internet, ethics and style capitals shape style. She observes how the fashion industry and culture can interrelate during the evolution of fashion.
Jen’s second book, launched at the end of September, “Bad Girls of Fashion – Style Rebels from Cleopatra to Lady Gaga”, looks like more fun because of its wild graphics. But it is equally as serious as her first book. In “Bad Girls” she again looks across history to discover the women who stand out through time because of the clothes they ferociously wore. These women got places because “fashion is anything but frivolous”.
She looks at over thirty outrageously different women that she categorizes according to their fashion leadership, decadence, modernism, artistry, gender-bending, instigation, anti-fashion, radicalization, freakiness and chameleon-like natures. She studies, occasionally speculates on, and is sometimes surprised by, how they got this way.
I appreciated these books because most fashion history books end at about 1970 and Jen, a Vancouverite, makes the effort to bring her topic up to the present day. Especially with the second book, I have come to understand and appreciate the fashion choices a couple of my nieces have made. The more power to them! Read more about Jen here.
In this book Jen reviews 20 influential facets of fashion, sometimes with cheeky commentary, over a span of several hundred years up to the day her book came out. She explores how the lifestyles of royals, celebrities, sports, gays and lesbians, global creativity, the military, music, subcultures, feminism, and art inspire fashion. She investigates how the business of fashion including models, photography, magazines, film, couture, menswear, ready-to-wear and mass marketing, the internet, ethics and style capitals shape style. She observes how the fashion industry and culture can interrelate during the evolution of fashion.
Jen’s second book, launched at the end of September, “Bad Girls of Fashion – Style Rebels from Cleopatra to Lady Gaga”, looks like more fun because of its wild graphics. But it is equally as serious as her first book. In “Bad Girls” she again looks across history to discover the women who stand out through time because of the clothes they ferociously wore. These women got places because “fashion is anything but frivolous”.
She looks at over thirty outrageously different women that she categorizes according to their fashion leadership, decadence, modernism, artistry, gender-bending, instigation, anti-fashion, radicalization, freakiness and chameleon-like natures. She studies, occasionally speculates on, and is sometimes surprised by, how they got this way.
I appreciated these books because most fashion history books end at about 1970 and Jen, a Vancouverite, makes the effort to bring her topic up to the present day. Especially with the second book, I have come to understand and appreciate the fashion choices a couple of my nieces have made. The more power to them! Read more about Jen here.
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