Wardrobes in wartime

The noteworthy years of the First World War, a now oft-forgotten period of turmoil in the history of fashion coming between Art Nouveau and the Twenties, proves to have been a time of amazing vitality and modernity. The attractive war crinoline with calf-length skirts, black as a fashion colour and comfortable suits of silk jersey are only a few of the stylistic innovations presented in this book featuring numerous never-before published original images. The political upheaval also impacted the increasing importance of fashion as a national economic factor. The artist Otto Haase-Heye’s luxurious Alfred-Marie fashion house established itself in Berlin and the “Association of the Fashion Industry” organised its much-noticed fashion weeks there. In Vienna, the avant-garde style of the Wiener Werkstätte and its graphic artists became firmly ingrained. And Paris, until then the undisputed capital of the fashion world, presented its newest collections in elegant journals such as Le Style Parisien and in atmospheric fashion photographs. The publication containing essays by Birgit Haase, Adelheid Rasche and Raffaella Sgubin features circa 240 artistic fashion prints, photographs, magazine covers and shows a selection of original European and North American clothes.