Designing Women: Cinema, Art Deco, and the Female Form

By Lucy Fischer

Book Overview

Grand, sensational, and exotic, Art Deco design was above all modern, exemplifying the majesty and boundless potential of a newly industrialized world. From department store window dressings to the illustrations in the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogs to the glamorous pages of Vogue and Harper's Bazar, Lucy Fischer documents the ubiquity of Art Deco in mainstream consumerism and its connection to the emergence of the "New Woman" in American society. Fischer argues that Art Deco functioned as a trademark for popular notions of femininity during a time when women were widely considered to be the primary consumers in the average household, and as the tactics of advertisers as well as the content of new magazines such as Good Housekeeping and the Woman's Home Companion increasingly catered to female buyers. While reflecting the growing prestige of the modern woman, Art Deco-inspired consumerism helped shape the image of femininity that would dominate the American imagination for decades to come.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231125011
• ISBN13: 9780231125017
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.5" x 10.7"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

wonderful book on art deco and cinéma

A wonderful book on the relation between film and the Arte deco style, especially in regards to the female icons in cinema representing this unique form of expression. The chapter on the Divine Garbo was particularly fascinating, in describing Garbo the actress as an Art deco icon in relation to the envrironnement of her films, not only the decors which represent the Art deco trend of her films but also the philosophy and ideas of this trend which she seems to represent. The book gave us a burning desire to watch again and again all those wonderful movies (with Garbo Woman of Affairs, The kiss, The Torrent, The single Standard, with Rogers and Astaire and many others) and to realise the richness of the Art deco style and the power of the cinema as a medium of communication.