Sophie Oliver for What the Dresses Know

An exciting new history of modernism that re-examines the movement through some of its most brilliant female artists.Pioneering women were at the heart of the movement known as modernism.

In _What the Dresses Know,_ Sophie Oliver offers a new account of their radical experiments and extraordinary lives, told through the clothes they made and wore.From a dress Vanessa Bell rescued from the London Blitz to Frida Kahlo's _huipiles_ and a waistcoat embroidered for Gertrude Stein by Alice B.

Toklas, these special objects tell a story of artists seeking transformation.

But getting dressed is rarely straightforward.

Modernist women used clothes to think through the contradictions of the modern world: the inequalities of industrialisation, the terrible conformities demanded by fascism and racism and the call of feminists, socialists and avant-gardists to act differently and take up new forms of art.This is an exhilarating account of women's bold attempts to make history during years of tumultuous change.

A distinctive new voice in cultural criticism, Sophie Oliver uses clothes to explore the challenges modernist women faced – and to understand her own impulses in writing about them.SOPHIE OLIVER is a critic, curator and academic at the University of Liverpool, where she teaches modernism and feminism.

An AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker, she writes for the _Times Literary Supplement_, _Literary Review_ and _Art Review_ and has curated exhibitions at the British Library, the National Poetry Library and the Harry Ransom Center.