The Fashion Businessdefinition of the more cultural scope of new art historical approaches, they
state that “when an article analyzes the images of women in paintings rather
than the qualities of the brushwork, or when a gallery lecturer ignores the
sheen of the Virgin Mary’s robe for the Church’s use of religious art in the
counter-reformation, the new art history is casting its shadow”.^2
However close it came to interrogating the cultural meanings of objects
depicted in paintings and other forms of cultural production, the new art
history remained largely concerned with issues of representation, the
relationship between culture and image. Design history, a relatively young
discipline compared to the history of art, has perhaps been able to take on
board the complexities of social considerations, economic implications and
cultural problems that inform and are informed by objects in a less fixed
and self-conscious manner. The relationship between production, consump-
tion and the designed artefact, which has always been central to any definition
of the discipline, demands an investigation of cultural context, and is well-
suited to the study of historical and contemporary clothing. As design
historian Josephine Miller has stated:
This is a multi-faceted subject and in some ways can be seen to relate to almost
every area of design and many aspects of the fine arts. It needs to be placed firmly
within a cultural context, against a background of technological and industrial
change, literary and aesthetic ideas. In the post-industrial period, the marketing
and retail outlets, together with developments in advertising and publishing
techniques, have brought a new set of considerations with them. Moreover, the
study of dress and its production cannot be separated from women’s history.^3Ten years on, the expansion of post-colonial studies and the examination
of masculinity and sexuality might broaden her list, but it stands as an
indication of the potential held in clothing for a design historical and broadly
cultural approach. It is surprising then, that despite its fitness for the field,
the study of dress and fashion still remains marginal to wider design historical
concerns. This perhaps reflects the discipline’s roots in industrial and
architectural design practice, with their modernist sympathies. A theoretical
and inspirational aid to students of industrial and graphic design, design
history as originally taught in art and design colleges tended to prioritize
production in the professional “masculine” sphere, re-enforcing notions of a
subordinate “feminine” area of interest, into which fashion has generally
been relegated. The relatively late establishment of fashion-design courses in
- Rees, A. and F. Borzello, The New Art History, London: Camden Press 1986.
- Conway, Hazel, Design History. A Student’s Handbook, London: Allen & Unwin 1987.