Christopher Breward Books

This book examines the way that objects 'speak' to us through the memories that we associate with them. Instead of viewing the meaning of particular designs as fixed and given, by looking at the process of evocation it finds an open and continuing dialogue between things, their makers and their consumers. This is not, however, to diminish the role of design in shapinghuman consciousness. The contributors do not view objects as blank carriers onto which humans project prior psychic dramas, but rather, place crucial importance on the precise materials from which they are made, their social, economic and historic reasons for being, and the way that we interact with them through our senses. This book therefore studies the physical withinthe intellectual, directly testing the concept of material culture. With telling illustrations, and spanning the Renaissance to the present day, leading scholars converge across disciplines to explore the souvenir-value of jewellery, textiles, the home, the urban space, modernist design, photography, the museum and even the sunken wreck. Together they show howthe sense of the past and of history, far from being a 'radical illusion' as some post-modernists claim, has been a deeply felt reality.

This visually stunning book, created for a major V&A exhibition, celebrates the best of British design from 1948 to today. Essays by leading curators as well as pieces by key designers—including Peter Saville, Barbara Hulanicki, Paul Smith, and Tom Dixon—build a comprehensive survey of more than 400 of the finest examples of fashion and textiles, furniture, ceramics and glass, theater design, graphics, photography, architecture, and fine art and sculpture from the period. From works commissioned for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II to the globally influential, and very British, counterculture, included here are works created for the 1960s boutiques of Mary Quant and Ossie Clark through the club cultures of punk, the new Romantics, and rave.

This lively survey of 150 years of fashion covers everything from Haute Couture to the High Street. From Coco Chanel to Alexander McQueen, Breward explores fashion as a cultural phenomenon. Topics include fashion in film, the world of Vogue and advertising, and the use of fashion to create identity from the Flapper to the New Look, and Dandy to Punk.

This illustrated survey of 600 years of fashion investigates its cultural and social meanings from medieval Europe to 20th-century America. It provides a guide to the changes in style and taste, showing that clothes have always played a pivotal role in defining a sense of identity and society.

Offers new perspectives on the suit, a most mundane, and yet poetic and beautiful garment.

Catalog of the exhibition "British design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age" at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Mar. 31-Aug. 12, 2012.

Spaces & Places: British Design 1948 - 2012 provides a much needed series of new perspectives on British Design's recent history.