Fashion and Materialism

Ulrich Lehmann is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Design and Arts at The New School, New York. He has contributed to a wide range of journals and edited collections on fashion and material culture. He is the author of Josiah McElheny: Object Lesson (White Cube, 2013) and Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity (MIT Press, 2001).

• IntroductionChapter 1: Production Into Consumption: Materialism in FashionChapter 2: Historical Materialism and Historicism: The Tiger’s LeapChapter 3: Sartorial Semantics: Le Mot dans la mode Chapter 4: Markets for Modernity: Salons, Galleries and FashionChapter 5: Structuralism and Materialism: The Language of a Pur(e)Suit Chapter 6: Dialectics in C.C.P.Chapter 7: Primary MaterialConcluding RemarkSelect bibliographyIndex

Ulrich Lehmann’s work to date has been invaluable in bringing together the history of ideas with the ever-shifting concept of ‘fashion’. In Fashion and Materialism he offers a timely reflection on the manner in which the Marxist understanding of historical materialism is fundamental to fashion’s meaning. In an era that several pundits have declaimed as one of post-fashion amorality, Lehmann’s provocative polemic may well prove a fundamental and corrective text for shaping and interpreting a post-fashion future.