CAMP: NOTES ON FASHION by Andrew Bolton with contributions by Fabio Cleto, Karen van Godtsenhoven and Amanda Garfinkel

Metropolitan Museum of Art / Yale, 2019, First edition, 346 pp., 8 3/4" X 11 3/4", Hardcover case housing two softcover volumes

Very good case with fine interior volumes (please see photos)

Although an elusive concept, “camp” can be found in most forms of artistic expression, revealing itself through an aesthetic of deliberate stylization. Fashion is one of the most overt and enduring conduits of the camp aesthetic. As a site for the playful dynamics between high art and popular culture, fashion both embraces and expresses such camp modes of enactment as irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration.
 
Drawing from Susan Sontag’s seminal essay “Notes on Camp,” the book explores how fashion designers have used their métier as a vehicle to engage with the camp aesthetic in compelling, humorous, and sometimes incongruous ways. As a sartorial manifestation of the camp sensibility, this thought-provoking publication contributes new theoretical and conceptual insights into the camp canon through texts and images.

Stunning new photography by Johnny Dufort highlights works by such fashion designers as Virgil Abloh, Thom Browne, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Alessandro Michele, Franco Moschino, Miuccia Prada, Richard Quinn, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeremy Scott, Anna Sui, Gianni Versace, and Vivienne Westwood.