Art Nouveau Fashion

Book excerpt: Art Nouveau movement overlapped with late Arts and Crafts in the 1890s and early modernism in the 1910s, combining the exquisite workmanship and natural forms of the former with the innovative materials, forms and practices associated with the latter. This book provides a fascinating introduction to the style, defining it, and placing it in design history by focusing on a number of important designers - Worth, Lucile, Paquin, Poiret - and key topics, such as clients and artists, jewelery and accessories, and advertising. Art Nouveau fashion questioned conventional gender norms with daring flamboyance, presenting women in suits, influenced by tailored menswear, for the street and overtly seductive lingerie for the boudoir. Fashionable corsets manipulated female bodies into increasingly artificial forms, while advertising seduced consumers with images of scantily clad women. The movement's radicalism and openness to diverse design influences directly influenced the counter-culture of the late 1960s, inspiring boutiques in London's fashionable Carnaby Street and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury.