Read TEXT B. FASHION ICONS – EXCURSES TO HISTORY.

The term “fashion icon” has recently replaced the slightly antiquated notion of “fashion

leaders.” During the second half of the twentieth century, fashion became less hierarchical, more meritocratic, and media-dominated.

Indeed, the media itself created its own icons of style, sometimes thrusting opinions to stylists, and others involved in the professional process of promoting fashion. The designer-led fashions of the past were joined by the concept of fashions created on the streets.

“Style is not fashion until it has reached the street,” is a statement popularly attributed to Coco Chanel, herself a leader; she was also part of the democratization of fashion. The “fashion leaders” of past generations were those in the very highest society—royalty, aristocrats, and their wives and mistresses. The Bourbon courts of pre-Revolutionary France were famous for their fashion excesses, while in the 1790s Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, introduced the new “Empire-line dresses,” which quickly crossed the Channel.

At the start of the twentieth century, magazine journalism had been enlivened by photographs. Much of the newsreel footage from the first decade of the new century showed King Edward VII and his elegant wife, Alexandra; many of his mistresses were also fashion leaders, such as Madame Standish of Paris, who was the first to wear the new “tailor-mades” by Creed to the Paris racecourse.

Chanel set up her fashion business before World War I and, in its aftermath, with radically altered style, her designs suited the new needs of the society. During the War, many women had experienced the freedom of wearing trousers for manual work—and freedom of movement was Chanel’s aim. She liked wearing men’s sweaters and put women in soft jersey and fluid garments. She popularized costume jewelry, the little black dress—and the suntan. She was emulated in every way, and when she came back from the Riviera to display her suntan at the Opera, a new craze began.

The war annihilated a generation of young men; the women who survived wanted to forget, rather than to mourn. Economic independence and changing mores meant new fashion icons were needed who personified the Jazz Age: Clara Bow, the “It Girl” of cinema; and the idol of Paris, singer Josephine Baker.

There was still a role for royalty—men and women were fascinated by the dress of Edward, Prince of Wales, and his Oxford bags, plus fours, and Argyle sweaters were widely copied. He even had a fabric pattern named after him—Prince-of-Wales check. His long-term mistress, Freda Dudley Ward, embodied the flapper look of the 1920s, but in the following decade he abandoned her to marry the stylish American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. It was she who formulated the fashion dictum, “A woman can never be too rich or too thin.” Although the public was distressed by his abdication, they nevertheless bought mass-market copies of her Molyneux wedding dress. Technological changes now meant that fashions could be copied at moderate prices, and, at last, ordinary women could copy their icons. This was the decade when Hollywood moguls allowed women to imitate the dresses of their favorite stars, as well as their makeup.

Designer Edith Head dressed leading stars Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and the young Elizabeth Taylor in outfits inspired by the New Look. The 1950s saw a sea change with the advent of youth oriented fashions, linked to music and to the newly discovered and largest consumer group, the “teenagers.”

Designer Ossie Clark famously dressed Mick Jagger in a white tunic and trousers in 1969, and in the 1970s the male stars wore makeup. The economic difficulties of the 1970s produced the hedonism of Studio 54 and the confrontational androgyny of punk. In 1977, the Sex Pistols wore clothes designed by Vivienne Westwood—torn, provocative, and fetishistic. In the 1980s, as economic prosperity returned, so did conventional icons, like the young Princess Diana, and more glamorous icons; the “supermodels” were dressed and lionized by Gianni Versace. Rap stars, like Run-DMC, made active sportswear fashionable; designers copied their look. In the 1990s, there was a need for less “glitzy” icons; fashion followed music into “grunge,” photographers like Corinne Day created “waifs” such as Kate Moss, and sports stars became emblems of style.

7.Some useful words and phrases:

1. meritocratic –сприяючий досягненню положення в суспільстві завдяки здібностям людини

2. media-dominated –з домінуванням засобів масової інформації

3. to thrust opinions –нав'язувати думки

4. fashion excesses –модні надмірності

5. Empire-line dresses –одяг в стилі ампір

6. to enliven–робити цікаво, оживляти

7. newsreel footage –хронікальна кінозйомка

8. tailor-mades –одяг, виготовлений на замовлення

9. fluid garments– одяг, що не заважає рухам

10. She was emulated in every way –її копіювали у всьому

11. suntan –засмага 12. to annihilate –винищувати 13. to mourn –тужити, оплакувати

14. changing mores–змінні вдачі

15. dictum –афоризм

16. abdication –зречення від престолу

17. hedonism –гедонізм, культ задоволення

18. androgyny of punks –гермофродизм Панків

19. to lionize - носитися з ким-н. як із знаменитістю

8.Read the text C;

<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Read TEXT A. Age-appropriate Clothing – Are You Serious?	\|	JACKIE KENNEDY: A FASHION ICON.

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