Overview

Examining histories of post-war Britain, fashion, modelling, photography and popular culture, 1960s Model Girl: Narrative Identities in Fashion, Time and History explores model girl narratives found throughout media, fashion magazines, advice literature, auto/biographies and fashion exhibits. Introducing theories of history, life-writing and narrative identity, 1960s Model Girl demonstrates how these can be applied to the study of fashion and shows how fashion studies opens new pathways to understanding identity and emergent British femininities. Drawing on a wealth of archival research, case studies include teen fashion magazines Petticoat and Model Girl; advice writing of model agent Lucie Clayton and fashion journalist Suzy Menkes; autobiographies of fashion models Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy; and the Mary Quant exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2019-2020). This book provides an intricate study of a varied and manifold figure whose impact and influence spreads further afield than a particular time, place and professional context. Closely attending to a range of model girl narratives, 1960s Model Girl illuminates the cultural past and, in turn, sheds light on our own historical present.

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9781350076297

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Reviews

This book offers fascinating insights into the material and affective dimensions of the 1960s Model Girl. It is a richly illustrated, textured examination of this central sixties figure, drawing on a wide range of material resources to capture the appeal of the model as ‘dream, profession and aspiration'. * Joanne Entwistle, King’s College London, UK * This thoughtful examination provides a crucial genealogy of that era’s Model Girl, a figure central to our understanding of the complex period that was the Sixties. McDowell’s consideration of the model—subject and object, original and copy, material and abstract, ordinary and extraordinary, person and process—allows for a keen analysis of these “girls”’ self/representational practices, smartly exposing the ambivalences and interstices of model/girl fashion narratives in all their iconic modes. * Nicole Stamant, Agnes Scott College, USA *

Author Information

Felice McDowell is Course Leader of the MA Fashion Cultures and Histories programme at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK. She is co-editor (with Leah Armstrong) of Fashioning Professionals (Bloomsbury, 2018).

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