Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)

About this book

Over time and across cultures extraordinary manipulations of the body have occurred in a continuing evolution of the concept of beauty. Fashion can be seen as the practice of some of the most extreme strategies to conform to shifting concepts of the physical ideal. Various zones of the bodythe neck the shoulders the bust the waist the hips and the feethave been constricted padded truncated or extended through subtle visual adjustments of proportion less subtle prosthesis and often deliberate physical deformation. This stunning book shows that an undeniable if uncanny beauty abides in the bundled cylindricality of a geisha tottering on raised geta or clogs; the tea-tray supporting bustle of an 1880s French visiting dress; the double-door expanse of eighteenth-century panniered court gowns; the bound feet and caged nails of aristocratic Manchu women; the neck-extending chokers of the Masai of Edwardian beauties and of John Gallianos designs for Dior; or the waist suppression of the sixteenth-century iron corsets and the cinches of early-nineteenth-century dandies. The photographs of fashion are augmented by paintings prints and drawings including caricatures by Gilray Cruikshank Daumier and Vernet. Published in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art