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Ever since the emergence of the seasonal fashion industry in the nineteenth century, artists have been engaging with fashion’s impact, meaning and forms in their artwork. In portraits, the clothes that sitters wear are often revelatory about their wider context or identity, or hold some symbolic meaning. As time has passed, small sartorial details artists used to provide visual praise or condemnation of their subjects have lost their legibility. Exploring the rich variety of ways in which artists in Britain have engaged with these possibilities within their work, this book examines the intricate relationships between the history of modern art and fashion. Offering in-depth explorations of over fifty artworks from the last 150 years, it explores the ways modern fashion has featured within art and, in some instances, the ways art has, in fact, become fashion. Discover the relationship between the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the creation of the London department store Liberty; the free advertising Burberry received in paintings of the First World War, and how London’s ‘Swinging Sixties’ scene led to the creation of some of the most important and powerful artworks of the twentieth century.
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