B-FH103
Cultural and Contextual Studies in Fashion 1:
Modern Fashion History and Visual Culture
For your essay, pick any two fashion designers who were contemporaries of each other. Compare and contrast their bodies of work within a defined time period and place, and explain how these were influenced by events of the time. Come to a conclusion about how far their creative visions were shaped by what was happening in the society at the time.
[Bikini revolution: Jacques Heim and Louis Reard]
Anneka Dave
BAFMI1A / 17912
Tan Lay Zheng Doreen
Lecturer
2015
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Fashion Media and Industries
LASALLE College of the Arts
Faculty of Design
Singapore
Accepted by the Faculty of Design, LASALLE College of the Arts,
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“It was in 1946 that the world first came to hear of a coral atoll in the Marshall Islands called Bikini. The following year, French couturier Louis Reart borrowed the name and applied it to a bathing costume for women.” (Alac, 2002) The names ‘bikini’ and ‘atome’ refer to a place located near the equator in the Pacific Ocean where the testing of the atomic bomb took place in the Marshall Islands of Bikini Atoll. Reard chose the name ‘bikini’ because he expected that the vulgarity of the two-piece would create the same consternation and apprehension that the atomic bomb caused in Bikini Atoll. He thought that this would reveal the same shock and terror that he initially experienced while running his mother’s lingerie boutique in the 1940’s, starting off from here his passion for clothing turned into a full time business, thereafter. Heim used the word ‘atome’ due to the shock-causing reactions of the atomic plants in the Islands. Both the designers can be seen going in the same direction of making statements about their respective garments and linking geographic references of the Marshall Islands in Bikini