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Creativity, Craft, Gender and Fashion
  • ISSN: 2050-0742
  • E-ISSN: 2050-0750

Abstract

Despite the fact that the Bauhaus school (1919–33) purposely restricted, streamlined and often discriminated against its female students and their creativity, and despite the fact that fashion and clothing were very deliberately excluded from the textile workshop production because the Bauhaus did not want to be associated with women’s crafts, ‘domesticity’ and the ‘frivolity’ of fashion, there are nonetheless several fashion objects that survived and many fashion stories that have not been included in the mainstream Bauhaus narratives and histories. This article investigates the suppressed histories of Bauhaus fashion by tracing the origins and remains of several Bauhaus dresses, as well as by investigating the biographies of former Bauhaus students and teachers who had different careers in several fashion industries (in Paris, Prague, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, etc.). My investigation revealed just how biased history and historiography can be, how certain (gendered) narratives fall through the cracks and how difficult it is to reconstruct an accurate representation of the multiple narratives that constitute the mythos of the Bauhaus.

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2025-01-29
2025-03-26
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