The London Look: Fashion from Street to Catwalk / Christopher Breward, Edwina Ehrman, Caroline Evans

From Savile Row to Carnaby Street, from the bohemian dress of the Oscar Wilde circle in the nineteenth century to the punk street styles of recent years, London has been a significant source of fashion style. This stunning book, a rich and stimulating history of two hundred years of London fashion, explores the circumstances and characteristics that have made the “London look” distinctive.

Focusing on the design, production, marketing, and consumption of clothing during this period, the authors place these activities in the context of social, cultural, and economic change in the capital. They move chronologically, discussing the rise of the West End as a center of fashionable life; the era of imperial fashion when London dominated the world politically and economically; the increasing democratization of fashionable dress; the challenges and conflicts of modernity; the school of couturiers that emerged midcentury; and the rise of the independent fashion designer and small boutiques. Finally they describe the London punks who, toward the end of the twentieth century, theatricalized the street in a mood of social and sartorial dissent and paved the way for postmodern styles.

Lavishly illustrated, the book draws on photographs of the Museum of London’s remarkable collection of objects and images, and material from the London Institute.