The Aesthetics of Dress

This book explores the relationships between how the body appears and feels in everyday life through aesthetics. The recent shift away from Kantian aesthetics towards a more enacted route places at its core the realization that the world is experienced as possibilities for action, and critical to this understanding is how the body's movement generates multiple pre-linguistic experiences and meaning. This route therefore realizes the importance of the body's role in working in conjunction with cognition in generating these experiences. Nevertheless, this attention has predominantly focused on how the body 'feels' through engagement, rather than how it appears. This might be problematic as it is essential to appreciate that the body is not naked in everyday life, and therefore through dress we look to restore the balance between appearance and feel.

We 'dress' our bodies to communicate to express our confidence (or not), identity, status, aspirations,affiliations etc. We dress according to the situation/audience etc. It might be to attract attention, to protect or to hide the body. It might be to accentuate height, or religious belief, or simply to shock or conform. Essentially, it is not simply clothing that we wear that achieves this for example, hair, makeup, jewellery, handbags, shoes, piercings, tattoos cumulatively these constitute how we 'dress' our bodies. Thus, the appearance (as well as the feel) of the body is significant if we are to appreciate an enacted approach to aesthetics.

Develops a broad interest in aesthetics through a short and focused text, and draws into it the potential of fashion/dress as a means of exemplifying its value Employs the unique argument that dress is a means of exemplifying aesthetics, and attempts to reveal the value of aesthetics for everyday life Of interest to multiple disciplines inside academia and beyond Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext

Starting out in theatre, Ian King completed by his PhD in 1990 and turned towards academics. He has organised arts-based events in over 30 countries across the world and is presently organizing a series of fashion colloquia to accompany fashion weeks.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Aesthetics and the Everyday.- The Aesthetics of Dress.- Discussion. <p