Anglomania : Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion

by Bolton, Andrew; Koda, Harold

• ISBN13: 9780300117851
• ISBN10: 030011785X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-02-28
• Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Summary

Anglomania, the craze for all things English, gripped Europe during the mid-to-late 18th century. As perceived by Anglophiles such as Voltaire and Montesquieu, England was a land of reason, freedom, and tolerance, a place where the Enlightenment found its greatest expression. What began as an intellectual phenomenon, however, became and has remained a matter of style. Through the lens of fashion,AngloManiaexamines aspects of English culture, such as class, sport, royalty, pageantry, eccentricity, the gentleman, and the country garden, which have fuelled the European and American imagination. This beautiful book presents historical costumes juxtaposed with late 20th- and early 21st-century fashions by Hussein Chalayan, John Galliano, Stephen Jones, Shaun Leane, Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy, and Vivienne Westwood. As with the hugely successful exhibition "Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century" at the Metropolitan Museum, the clothing is styled as a series of thematic vignettes in the Museum's English Period Rooms. This book comprises photographs of the installations along with text written by Andrew Bolton. FromAngloMania,we learn that Englishness is a romantic construct based on fictive and imaginary narratives. In terms of fashion, these narratives emerge as ones that are satirical, nostalgic, theatrical, and like the English weather, at once indomitable and unpredictable.

Author Biography

Andrew Bolton is Associate Curator of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Table of Contents

Tell a man by his clothes	p. 16
John Bull	p. 19
The English garden : Kirtlington Park dining room	p. 29
Upstairs/downstairs : Cassiobury Park staircase	p. 39
The deathbed : Hampton Court state bed	p. 51
Empire and monarchy : Elizabethan room	p. 63
Francomania : Croome Court tapestry room	p. 69
The gentlemen's club : Lansdowne dining room	p. 75
The hunt	p. 107
The hunt ball	p. 125
Catalogue	p. 147
Illustrations	p. 155
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.