From Hell's heart I strike at thee

[mme_hardy]

 I am going to be doing a full review later.  For Christmas, I asked for Linda Przybyszewski's The Lost Art of Dress.  I am reading it with interest.  It is the kind of  history where you'd much rather read the author's research sources than her book.   For one thing, she constantly refers to her sources as "A Dress Doctor" or "Two Dress Doctors", and then you have to look in the back for the name of the woman who said X or Y or Z.

Anyway, full rant later.  Here's a representative bit.

 

 The Dress Doctors took their ideas, reworked them into the Five Art Principles—harmony, rhythm, balance, proportion, and emphasis—and applied them to dress. As a glance around any college campus will prove, studying the principles of art changes how a person dresses. While the law faculty members in their neat, dark suits appear ready to testify before Congress, and the Romance language professors dress with a certain je ne sais quoi , it is the art historians whose subtle color schemes, unusual accessories, and artfully groomed heads draw admiration. There is one exception to this rule: art historians who study ugly things. If a professor’s specialty is the life and work of an old man from Alabama who made murals out of carburetors and teaspoons, no one looks to her for fashion tips. For the rest of us, there are the Five Art Principles.

(For the record, Dr. Przybyszewski is a professor of history, not of art history.)   

Comments

[legionseagle]

What a load of -- round objects. I had a law professor -- one of the four most eminent contract lawyers in the Commonwealth (one of the other three was also teaching that particular seminar) -- who specialised in International Trade and his gown was literally green with age.

[mme_hardy]

It isn't as if the sloppy, ill-dressed professor is a thing commonly found in nature or anything. I also very much disliked the casual slap at art historians who study "ugly art".

[legionseagle]

Oh, God, yes -- all the unspoken assumptions. When I flew home from Canada in 1985 I found myself sitting next to a woman who was an artist who'd gone along the Allegheny painting post-industrial Pittsburgh and the wrecks of old foundries and it sounded wonderful - especially to someone raised on Lowry.

[mme_hardy]

The entire book is written as if there is one abstract and unvarying standard of beauty, which is especially farcical given that women have been being given expert advice on dress for 400 years to my certain knowledge, and no two decades are the same.

edit: Note also the dog-whistle about (probable) race and (definite) poverty.

[sollers]

Yesterday afternoon we took the dogs for a walk along the canal. There were wonderful reflections of winters trees, which were photographed, but I wished I too had brought my phone because the sewage works on the other side were astonishingly beautiful.

[(Anonymous)]

What a waste of a great book title.

P.

[pameladean]

Sorry, that was me -- DW keeps logging me out randomly.

P.

[mme_hardy]

The book builds on the research done for her annual seminar, "A Nation of Slobs". No comment.

[movingfinger]

Well, you can review it on Amazon...

Referring to "Dress Doctors" (I assume this is a term she invented in an effort to pheromone-spray the subject) instead of by their names is both twee and demeaning. Well done that historian.

[mme_hardy]

The first one I was aware of was Edith Head, the Hollywood fashion designer who had a show and book by that name, and who is *not* cited in the index. Dr. P attributes the title to a story about Mary Brooks Picken -- who deserves a good book! -- helping a woman doctor in 1918 choose professional clothes.

Edit: Note that Dr. P is "inspired by" that story; she doesn't say that Picken referred to herself in general as a Dress Doctor.

[oursin]

Wow, attribution failure, wot? And is she assuming coherence of views, nay, hive mind even, among the designated group by giving them a cute collective title? It is to point and mock.

[mme_hardy]

Not just hive mind, but consistent hive mind over time. I do so love it when female historians erase female identities.

Edit: Also, it is wildly inconsistent which women she chooses to cite by name -- Mary Brooks Picken and the new-to-me Goldstein sisters, yes; Winifred Rauschenbuch, no. Ms. Rauschenbuch's citation is to an entire book, so you'd think she'd deserve a name.

[ankaret]

Ick icketty ick.

I do have one very, very stylish friend who studied art history, but she basically looks like Helena Bonham Carter only with blue hair, which I am not convinced is what the lady means by subtle colour schemes and artfully groomed heads.

[caulkhead]

the Romance language professors dress with a certain je ne said quoi Hm. We had one who dressed like Giles-from-Buffy, one who lived in jeans, the Dean, whom we were all certain was the model for Professor Snape, and the rest were sort of nondescript.

[muccamukk]

Yeah. I did interdisciplinary, and one department dressed much like another, as far as I could tell. It depended on the professor, not the subject.

[muccamukk]

Well that saved me time. I heard her on Blackstory, and thought she sounded okay, but apparently that didn't translate to writing.

[mme_hardy]

It is an awful awful book, with an irritating message. (It's all been downhill since the 1960s; blame the Baby Boomers.)

[genarti]

Wow. Well, that's one book solidly marked as Godawful in my mental filing system! Ugh, that quote is terrible on so many levels, from classism to factuality.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. What planet was it?