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SUMMARY

Dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of fashion from an academic perspective, the quarterly journal Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture views fashion as a cultural phenomenon, offering the reader a wide range of articles by leading Western and Russian spe­cialists, as well as classical texts on fashion theory. From the history of dress and design to body practices; from the work of well-known de­signers to issues around consumption in fashion; from beauty and the fashionable figure through the ages to fashion journalism, fashion and PR, fashion and city life, art and fashion, fashion and photography — Fashion Theory covers it all.

This issue’s Dress section takes a closer look at footwear.

Anna Catalani offers Fashionable Curiosities: Extreme Footwear as Wearable Fantasies. This paper considers extreme shoes and the visual statements they make about contemporary society, women and feminin­ity. It argues that extreme shoes are puzzling yet charming objects, epitomizing a spectacle-centered society: they are part of unexpected, personal performances, which blend the boundaries of fashion and art and allow the wearers to shift from an ordinary ‘self’ to the extraordinary ‘other’.

Leading research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology Irina Sirotkinas Ballet Shoes: Ballet, Desire and Power looks at the history and the role of bal­let slippers in dancers’ lives. What we associate with ballet shoes, Sirot-kina suggests, stretches far beyond simple footwear. The shoes are also seen as a symbol of power and desire. A ballerina’s foot in its slipper is often compared to a tightly corseted waist; like corsets, ballet shoes are the object of fetish. Sirotkina juxtaposes dance on pointe and the form of free dance created by the barefoot dancer, Isadora Duncan. If ballet shoes are the symbol of ballet, bare feet and running shoes have become the attributes of modern dance.

Irina Mikhailova offers Ivan Tsarevich in Cheboty, Vasilisa the Beau­tiful in Porshni: Russian Footwear from the Ninth to the Seventeenth Century. Professor of History at St. Petersburg State University, Irina Mikhailova specializes in the history of Ancient Rus and Muscovy. In this fascinating article, she tells the story of Russian footwear from the ninth to the seventeenth century. What were the pointed boots known as chereviki made of? How were the simple shoes porshni made? When were shoes and soft ankle boots worn, and by whom? These are just some of the questions Mikhailova addresses in her illuminating piece.

Maria Terekhovas American Shoes, Russian Trademark: The Mu­seum Attribution of a Pair of Early Twentieth Century Shoes traces the story of the attribution of a pair of beaded women’s shoes from the dress and fabrics collection of the State Museum of the History of St. Peters­burg. Originally, the elegant shoes with French heels were attributed in accordance with the trademarks on the insoles: N. SOBTSOV//ST. PE­TERSBURG. This mark was used by the owner of a shoe shop in St. Pe­tersburg’s Great Gostiny Dvor shopping mall. The maker of the items remained unknown, and the date was illegible. How did this American pair of shoes acquire the trademark of a St. Petersburg seller? Researching this curious case, Terekhova discovered that the story of a single pair of shoes could reveal ample information on shoemaking, trademark prac­tice and the positioning of brands in the Russian and American market­place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The case also sheds light on contemporary shoe production, attribution and trade, as well as on styles and trends in popular footwear.

Natalia Lebina offers ‘A Farewell to Youth, Or, Our Answer to Stily-agi: Everyday Rubber Footwear in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. In this piece, Professor of History and Consultant at Russia’s Min­istry of Culture Naslediye (Heritage) Research Institute Natalia Lebina focuses on the Thaw and on the types of footwear that were popular in this brief period in Soviet history. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed a real lack of stylish and comfortable footwear, which, Lebina suggests, served to put even greater focus on this element of the contemporary wardrobe.

In this issue’s Body section, Linor Goralik offers Distortion as the New Norm: Objects that Distort the Body, and Fashion Design as a So­cial Art. In order to form its critical view on any shortcomings, in con­temporary culture the gaze, be it human or heavenly, one’s own or that of another, is no longer content with examining the surface of the body: it must delve deeper, literally getting under our skin. If in the middle of the twentieth century social opinion got right up close and personal with the body, examining pores and assessing the health of our hair at the roots, today, even this is no longer close enough. Social opinion now carves the body and the face into separate areas; spurred on by this ruth­less examination, plastic surgery and cosmetology constantly remind con­sumers how important it is to strive to conform to the highest aesthetic standards and constantly changing social norms. This, in turn, makes the critical gaze even more piercing and exacting, serving to raise stand­ards still further. As a result of this endless process, our visual field has become filled with a huge number of media images of distorted faces and bodies. Just three decades ago, such images would only have been considered appropriate in medical literature or in horror films. Goralik’s article looks at the strategies used by contemporary designers and artists working with dress in order creatively to deal with this phenomenon.

Yulia Minina offers Vietnam’s Tooth-Blackening Tradition: Functions and Symbolism in the Context of Body Culture. By the middle of the twentieth century, white teeth had come to be seen as a sign of health and beauty among both the urban and the rural population of Vietnam. The tradition of tooth-blackening still remained in several far-flung provinces, chiefly among women who chewed betel. If previously, black teeth had been seen as one of the main attributes of feminine beauty, later, due to European influence, they came to be viewed with revulsion and derision. This shift, however, meant that the deep meaning and functions behind the tooth-blackening practice were gradually lost. The only remaining function of tooth-blackening came to be purely practical. The genera­tion of Vietnamese who had been through tooth-blackening was getting older. Thus, gradually, in today’s Vietnam, black teeth have come to be associated with elderly women who live in distant provinces and chew betel. The functions of the ancient practice of tooth-blackening, which has been little studied and is barely covered by academic literature, have now come to be understood in a somewhat basic and superficial way.

With this issue’s Culture section devoted to fashion and humour, Fashion Theory is proud to present Crinoline Anecdotes, a short brochure published in St. Petersburg in 1858. This little gem focuses on crinolines and ladies’ top hats, items we are used to seeing in caricatures of that time. The crinoline in particular, of course, was frequently the target of contemporary satire. We offer the brochure with a foreword by Ksenia Gusarova, From Crinolines to Louboutins: On Perennial Topics in Fash­ion Satire, that serves to situate our nineteenth-century publication in a more modern context, lending it a contemporary dimension.

Orna Ben-Meir offers Humour as a Strategy in Contemporary Fash­ion. Humour is a powerful cognitive tool for drawing enhanced and prolonged attention. Humour was introduced to the history of modern art through Dada and Marcel Duchamp, who smashed all aesthetic and artistic values. It was through their offspring, the Surrealists, that in the forties humour was infiltrated to the work of Elsa Schiaparelli, the first fashion designer who challenged the ideal of the beautiful. Her natural followers were Vivienne Westwood and Punk sub-culture in the sev­enties, who violated most of the sartorial and aesthetic codes that had been developed in the history of fashion. Rei Kawakubo followed in Punk’s footsteps with her work for Comme des Garçons in the eighties, with humour subsequently becoming a common token in the language of contemporary fashion. This paper explores the nature of humour in contemporary fashion, by analyzing it through its basic characteristics prescribed in the earlier theories of Sigmund Freud and Henry Bergson. It will show that humour in contemporary fashion has become more than a strategy for gaining commercial visibility: it is also a reflective tool for commentary on the topic of fashion.

Rebecca Arnold presents Vivienne Westwood’s Anglomania, a chap­ter from The Englishness of English Dress, published by Berg in 2002. For Westwood, fashion was never just about clothes. Her art is an ongo­ing dialogue with history, a constant striving for styles that transcend the boundaries of everyday reality, guaranteeing the wearer constant attention. Vivienne Westwood outfits are never ordinary. The designer achieves her desired effect mainly through the use of images associated with Englishness. This, however, is not a small-town, provincial Eng-lishness, but the England of royalty and aristocracy. This view of fash­ion as a means of lavish self-assertion is what leads Arnold to connect Vivienne Westwood’s work with the dandy portrait genre. The dandy portrait combined elements of English and continental art. Westwood, Arnold suggests, creates outfits for her clients in the style of Grand Man­ner portraits: her Englishness is not as simple as it might at first glance appear. In her investigation, Arnold focuses on Vivienne Westwood’s collections created between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s. During the eighties and nineties, Westwood and Malcolm McLaren developed the new approach which took her work to a whole new level. Some of the key ingredients of Westwood’s new style were her suits, mini-crinis and faux fur ermine stoles. English and Scottish fabrics and traditional dress were, for Westwood, a source both of inspiration, and of parody.

Maria Terekhova offers From Max Linder’s Top Hat to Chaplin the Constructivist: Comedy and the Comic on the Russian Screen from 1900 to the Early 1920s, a review of the comedy films shown in Russia in the first two decades of the twentieth century. By the mid-1900s, St. Pe­tersburg already boasted a number of cinemas with foyers, refreshment areas, orchestra pits and colourful posters outside. Closely resembling their finest counterparts in Western Europe, these specialized venues appeared in the Russian city earlier than they did in the USA. By the 1910s, cinemas were to be found in most major Russian cities. So what films were popular at that time? What did contemporary Russian view­ers find to be entertaining? These and other questions form the focus of Terekhova’s article.

Ekaterina Shubnaya offers ‘Your Back Is all White’: Inappropriate Dress as a Tool for Creating Comic Effect in Cinema. Humour can be seen as a universal means of adaptation: a convenient, pleasant and so­cially acceptable way of interacting with the alien, the frightening and the unknown. Humour is also an effective method for processing nega­tive and unwanted emotion which, for personal or social reasons, it may be difficult to express. Examining a number of movie scenes, the author looks at the creation of comical effect through the use of inappropriate clothing. Comic effect is often used to build up a character’s personality, not just in comedies. The comic themes and episodes used in order to do this, tend to reflect cultural norms and form the boundaries of what is permissible. Shubnaya offers a whole host of Hollywood plots and epi­sodes, in which comic effect is achieved through the use of inappropriate dress. By using Hollywood movies as examples, Shubnaya ensures am­ple homogenous material for her case studies. Although the films have an American focus, Hollywood movies enjoy an international audience including both Russia and Western countries. Many of the themes have universal appeal and are free from the cultural and ethnic bias encoun­tered in certain countries.

Olga Khoroshilovas Da Vinci’s Pranks: What Mona Lisa’s Dress Conceals aims to analyze certain aspects of La Gioconda’s dress and ap­pearance not only from the point of view of the history of dress, but also in the light of recent discoveries. Doctor of Art History, Associate Pro­fessor at St. Petersburg State University of Industrial Technology and Design, and Lecturer at the State Russian Museum, Olga Khoroshilova explains, for instance, how and why the myth surrounding the Mona Lisa’s lack of eyebrows arose, and how it is connected with Quattrocento fashion. Based on her analysis of fabrics and embroidery, and on recent research, Khoroshilova suggests that La Gioconda’s clothing in fact con­ceals an inscription with Leonardo da Vinci’s name.

In the Museum Business column, Maria Terekhova offers Galoshes in the Museum: On the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg’s Collection Illustrating the History of the Red Triangle Factory. Terek-hova’s article looks at the collection of exhibits linked with the Trian­gle shoe factory that has been assembled by the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg. The first item to enter the collection in 1948 was a chromolithograph from 1892 showing the Russian-American Rubber Manufacture Association works. Thanks to subsequent dona­tions, purchases and transfers, the collection now includes a number of diverse items such as advertising posters and billboards, photographs and documents, price lists and packaging. The collection is currently the largest of its kind in Russia.

In this issue’s Events section, Ekaterina Kulinicheva visits the ex­hibition ‘A Consumer’s Dream’ at Moscow’s Multimedia Art Museum (18 December 2015 – 29 February 2016) and presents Chasing the Buy­er’s Dream: On the History of Our Relationship with Consumer Goods.

Lauren Downing Peters offers Utopian Bodies: Revision, her review of ‘Utopian Bodies – Fashion Looks Forward’ at the Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (25 September 2015 – 7 February 2016).

Anya Kurennaya visits ‘Fairy Tale Fashion’ in New York’s Museum at FIT (15 January – 16 April 2016) and shares her impressions in Fairy Tales and Fashion: A Match Made in Fairy Tale Heaven.

Bella Shapiro offers a review of ‘Lace on Show’ at Moscow’s All-Rus­sian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art (26 March – 20 No­vember 2016) with Lace Is Now a Necessary Element of Dress.

Nina Kertsellis Steampunk: Fashion of the Future, Stuck in the Past takes a look at the ‘Steampunk Couture’ exhibition at Moscow’s Open Gal­lery (8 December 2014 – 1 February 2015).

Ekaterina Kulinicheva offers An Injection of Satire: her take on ‘The Anatomy of Laughter: English Caricature from the Eighteenth to the First Third of the Nineteenth Century’ at Moscow’s Tsaritsyno State Museum Reserve (1 April – 3 July 2016).

In Fashion Media: Past and Present, Tiziana Ferrero-Regis reviews Fashion Media: Past and Present, edited by Djurdja Bartlett, Shaun Cole and Agnès Rocamora. Bloomsbury, London, 2013.

In this issue’s Books section, Ekaterina Kulinicheva presents Beard Jokes as a Fashion Attribute, her review of The Philosophy of Beards by Thomas S. Gowing. British Library Publishing, 2014. 80 pp.