HIST 420 – History of Fashion

Formerly called HIST 430 – History of Fashion

Description
This course explores the evolution of Italian Fashion over the last eight centuries, from the first emergence and conceptualization of ‘Fashion’ at the blossoming of Renaissance consumer society in the late fourteenth century to the affirmation of Italian High Fashion in the last century and up to the present challenges. The evolution of the Italian market for fashion items such as luxury clothes, designer fabrics, precious accessories, jewels, and perfumes is central to this exploration. A multi-faceted and cross-thematic understanding of style, spirit, creativity, artistic content, and artisanal know-how embedded in Italian Fashion is acquired by establishing dynamic relationships between past and contemporary fashion/cultural issues. All these topics will be explored thanks to class discussion, multimedia projections, and weekly site experiences ranging from visits to collections, local artistic workshops, fashion ateliers, and museums, as well as luxury and high fashion stores whose excellence is rooted in the critical part played by Florence in the Italian high fashion sector.

Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, students will be able:
– To recognize and analyze in a critical way the fundamental aspects of fashion evolution explored during the semester.
– To understand how artistic developments affected the market for clothes, fabrics, and luxury goods.
– To establish a connection between fashion and wider cultural/economic phenomena.
– To interpret primary and secondary sources and to use these sources to develop an independent vision of the subject.
– To articulate in a fluent way, both in written and oral form, the knowledge acquired by using the right lexicon.

Course descriptions may be subject to occasional minor modifications at the discretion of the instructor.

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