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Through their metaphorical and material qualities, textiles can be seductive, exciting, intimate and, at times, shocking and disquieting. This book is the first critical examination of the erotically charged relationship between the surface of the skin and the touch of cloth, exploring the ways in which textiles can seduce, conceal and reveal through their interactions with the body.
From the beautiful cloth which is quietly suggestive, to bold expressions of deviant sexuality, cloth is a message carrier for both desiring and being desired. The drape, fold, touch and feel, the sound and look of cloth in motion, allow for the exploration of identity as a sensual, gendered or political experience. The book features contributions on the sensory rustle and drape of silk taffeta and the secret pleasures of embroidery, on fetishistic punk street-style and homoerotic intimacy in men's shirts on screen, and a new perspective on the role of cloth and skin in the classic film
Blade Runner. In doing so, it interrogates experiences of cloth within social, historical, psychological and cultural contexts.
Divided into four sections on representation, design, otherness and performance,
The Erotic Cloth showcases a variety of debates that are at the heart of contemporary textile research, drawing on the fields of art, design, film, performance, culture and politics. Playful, provocative and beautifully illustrated with over 50 color images, it will appeal to students and scholars of textiles, fashion, gender, art and anthropology.
List of contents
List of contributors
List of illustrations
Foreword, Mary Schoeser
Acknowledgements
An introduction to
The Erotic ClothProf. Lesley Millar and Prof. Alice Kettle
I. The representation of cloth 1. Folds, scissors and cleavage in Giovanni Battista Moroni's
Il TagliapanniAngela Maddock
2. A perverted taste: Italian depictions of cloth and puberty in mid-nineteenth-century marble
Dr Claire Jones
3. Stitching up: embroidering the sex life of a fetishist image-maker
Dr Nigel Hurlstone
II. Making and remaking the cloth4. The rustle of taffeta - the value of hapticity in research and reconstruction of an eighteenth-century Sack-back dress
Debra Roberts
5. The embroiderer's
jouissance: stitching a feminine identity in an environment of mining machismo
Ruth Hingston
6. Flying in the face of fashion; how through punk, fetish and sexually orientated clothing made it into the mainstream
Prof. Malcolm Garrett in conversation with Prof. Alice Kettle
III. The alternative cloth 7. Present or absent shirts: creation of a lexicon of erotic intimacy and masculine mourning
Prof. Catherine Harper
8. Empowering the Replicant: visual and haptic narratives in
Blade RunnerCaroline Wintersgill and Dr Savithri Bartlett
9. Caressing cloth: the warp and weft as site of exchange
Dr Catherine Dormor
IV. The performing cloth10. Curvatures of cloth: William Hogarth's
Line of Beauty and 'The heart of true eroticism' in serpentine dance
Dr Georgina Williams
11. The echoes of erotic cloth in film
Liz Rideal
12. UN/DRESS
Masako Matsushita in conversation with Prof. Lesley Millar
Afterword: Erotic cloth - the case of
kimonoYuko Ikeda
About the author
Alice Kettle is Professor of Textile Arts at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is co-author of Machine Stitch Perspectives with Jane McKeating (A&C Black, 2010) Hand Stitch Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2012) and Collaboration Through Craft (Bloomsbury, 2013) with Dr Amanda Ravetz and Helen Felcey. She is a practising artist with work in international collections including the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, The Crafts Council of Great Britain, Museums in Riga, MAIO in Turin, and the Belger Collection Kansas City, USA.Lesley Millar is Emerita Professor of Textile Culture at the University for the Creative Arts, UK. She has been responsible for many international touring textile exhibitions, particularly featuring artists from Japan and the UK. She has contributed to many publications most recently Surface Tensions (2013) and Outside: Activating Cloth to enhance the way we live (2014). In 2008 she received the Japan Society Award for significant contribution to Anglo-Japanese relationships and in 2011 was appointed MBE for her contribution to Higher Education.
Summary
Through their metaphorical and material qualities, textiles can be seductive, exciting, intimate and, at times, shocking and disquieting. This book is the first critical examination of the erotically charged relationship between the surface of the skin and the touch of cloth, exploring the ways in which textiles can seduce, conceal and reveal through their interactions with the body.
From the beautiful cloth which is quietly suggestive, to bold expressions of deviant sexuality, cloth is a message carrier for both desiring and being desired. The drape, fold, touch and feel, the sound and look of cloth in motion, allow for the exploration of identity as a sensual, gendered or political experience. The book features contributions on the sensory rustle and drape of silk taffeta and the secret pleasures of embroidery, on fetishistic punk street-style and homoerotic intimacy in men’s shirts on screen, and a new perspective on the role of cloth and skin in the classic film Blade Runner. In doing so, it interrogates experiences of cloth within social, historical, psychological and cultural contexts.
Divided into four sections on representation, design, otherness and performance, The Erotic Cloth showcases a variety of debates that are at the heart of contemporary textile research, drawing on the fields of art, design, film, performance, culture and politics. Playful, provocative and beautifully illustrated with over 50 color images, it will appeal to students and scholars of textiles, fashion, gender, art and anthropology.
Foreword
Unravelling the erotic relationship between textiles and the body through case studies in film, painting, sculpture and design, this book shows how cloth has the potency to seduce, excite and disturb.
Additional text
Millar and Kettle's formidable knowledge offers a stimulating exploration of our sensual relationship with cloth. An immensely satisfying book, and essential reading for anyone with a passion for fabric.
