Overview
- Why millions of shoppers have no choice but to succumb to the orgy of the annual sales
- The symbolic death in the shop window of fashion as an easy-to-read picture story
- How dazzling shopping streets are transformed into an unconscious demonstration of archaic sacrificial ritual
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
When, for a few weeks each year, Western fashion victims become red-hot with excitement waiting for the fashion sales to take place, they are unconsciously following an ancient sacrificial ritual. Just as in ancient Greece, the God of Fertility had to be killed during the Dionysia in order to be resurrected, the season’s fashion has today to be symbolically sacrificed in order for the shop windows to be filled with something new. Harald Gruendl, who with EOOS designs shopping temples for such as Armani and Adidas, here observes the death and resurrection of fashion in the shop windows of Paris, London, New York, Hamburg and Vienna at sales time. In his book he shows why archaic scenes of darkness, nakedness and chaos briefly dominate the shopping streets of the fashion metropolises, and why people buy (and have to).
About the author
Harald Gründl. Born in Vienna in 1967. Studied mechanical engineering, industrial design and philosophy. Founded the EOOS design office in 1995 together with Martin Bergmann and Gernot Bohmann, an office that has won numerous international awards and prizes.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Death of Fashion
Book Subtitle: The Passage Rite of Fashion in the Show Window
Authors: Harald Gruendl
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-49855-2
Publisher: Springer Vienna
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag Vienna 2007
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: 300
Number of Illustrations: 44 illustrations in colour
Topics: Design, general, Sociology, general, Phenomenology, Marketing