The Surreal Body: Fetish and Fashion

Ghislaine Wood

Softcover | 18.73 x 1.27 x 21.59 cm | 96 pp

V&A | 2007 | 9781851775026

The representation of the body, and particularly the female body, provides a common thread through the activities of the Surrealists. In fashion photography and illustration, the body was manipulated, fetishised and irrecoverably changed.

Ghislaine Wood surveys the manifold ways in which Surrealism influenced fashion,
from the unsettling 'Street of Mannequins' at the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme to Elsa Schiaparelli's extraordinary 'Skeleton' dress, and Salvador Dali's opulent anthropomorphic jewellery. This new and often highly eroticised femininity vision quickly gained general currency, with popular fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar playing an important role in its dissemination.

The Surreal Body examines the role of the body as a site for Surrealist experiment, as a conduit for the transmission of Surrealist ideas and as the primary agent in the consumption of Surrealism. Published to accompany a major V&A exhibition, it provides a stunningly illustrated introduction to Surrealist fashion, adornment and style and the consumer culture in which they flourished.