Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture

The first comprehensive examination of the many overlaps and visual and intellectual principles that unite fashion and architecture.

In recent years, the boundaries between architecture and fashion have become increasingly blurred, and this beautifully illustrated new book explores the intersections and concepts that underlie the two disciplines. Both architecture and fashion are based on the human body and on ideas of space, volume, and movement. Each functions as shelter or wrapping for the body—a mediating layer between the body and the environment—and can express personal, political, and cultural identity.

Fashion designers and architects share much of the same vocabulary and similar techniques of construction: pinning, darting, folding, wrapping, draping. Fashion designers have always been able to achieve complex, often architectonic garments using fabric. Today, many architects are looking to fashion and techniques of tailoring as they attempt to achieve more and more complex forms using hard materials.

The book focuses on the period 1980 to the present and includes forty-six architects and fashion designers from the United States, Europe, and Japan. The featured designers include Issey Miyake, Junya Watanabe, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and Vivienne Westwood, among others. The architects include Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Eisenman Architects. 530 illustrations, 500 in color.