1950S Fashion Print

A sourcebook of 1950s fashion print, this book covers the heyday of postwar design where an analytical approach to design, with a lightness and freshness, combined with whimsical imagery and idiosyncratic subject matter. The designs and influences of the print gurus of the time - Lucienne Day, Robert Stewart and Maija Isola of Marimekko - are all covered.

The creativity of the period - the beginning of the atomic age - is given full expression in this sourcebook of hundreds of designs. It is an essential sourcebook for contemporary design practitioners and students. The book contains exclusive illustrations and original artwork from designers as well as finished prints. Each short chapter introduction is followed by a range of illustrations with captions to give provenance and relevance. The prints are arranged in the following chapters:

 Narrative and Novelty: prints from cowboys to spacemen
 Abstraction: abstracted, distorted and attenuated forms used in print
 Artistic license: the influence of artists such as Miro and de Kooning on fashion print
 Kinetic prints that showed the influence of the era's 'mobiles, doodles and spasms'