Topics in Italian Culture and Literature (250-0-20)
Topic
History of Fashion
Instructors
Carla Lunghi
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 2-430: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Overview of class
Taught by Distinguished Fulbright Chair in Italian Studies, Professor Carla Lunghi.
Strictly speaking, until the first half of the 20th century, it is difficult to talk about a fashion which is essentially Italian rather than the execution of French-inspired models. It was only starting from the 1950s, with the fashion shows in Sala Bianca in Florence, that Italian fashion was established at the international level. The Fifties were also the decade of the Italian economic miracle, which constitutes both the presupposition and the consequence of a growth in American interest in Italian fashion. In the eighties Italy established fashion as a language of mass culture with the invention of a new prêt-à-porter - or "ready to wear": a kind of style attractive from an aesthetic point of view and independent from high fashion and from France stylistically and structurally.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Italian fashion collects heritage of craftsmanship, taste for beauty, attention to the manufacture of the product, organizational capacity, and production quality, but above all, it launches new ways of representing, selling and communicating the product.
The course will start with an introduction to the birth of modern fashion in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century and will then focus on the birth and the development of Italian fashion from 1920 up to 2000, always comparing it with other western fashion styles in France, in the United Kingdom and in the U.S.A.
Fashion plays a key role in Italian culture and the study of its diachronic and synchronic development help to understand many aspects of Italian society and its way of lifestyle.
Class Notes
Taught in English.
Class Attributes
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area