Performance, Fashion and the Modern Interior: From the Victorians to Today

Performance, Fashion and the Modern Interior examines the interior as a "stage" upon which modern life and lifestyles are consciously fashioned and "performed", and from which modern identities are projected by and through design. Scholars from Europe, Canada, America and Australia present a range of interior environments—domestic interiors, sets for stage and film, exhibition spaces, art galleries, hotel lobbies, cafes and retail spaces—to explore each as an intersection of fashion, lifestyle and performance. Sharing the thesis that the fashionably dressed body and the interior can be seen as part of the same creative and expressive continuum, the essays highlight the ways in which interiors can give shape to and dramatize modern life.