Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture, and the Body by Donatella Barbieri (review)

Costume in Performance: Materiality, Culture, and the Body provides a richly illustrated, compelling analysis of historical and contemporary costume design. The book successfully provokes a scholarly conversation that makes a marked departure from the kind of how-to book or fashion history that tends to dominate the shelves. The traditional mode of character-based and semiotic analysis usually stressed in design curricula is present, but the book also explores interdisciplinary theoretical territory and makes broader arguments about the function of costume within a variety of performance genres, time-periods, and sociopolitical contexts. The emphasis on the agency of costume in rehearsal and performance speaks in concert with other recent discourse on puppetry and performing objects.

This book is primarily the product of Donatella Barbieri's joint research fellowship from the London College of Fashion and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). She made good use of her institutional connections while researching this book by cross-referencing paintings, marginalia, and physical artifacts with literary sources in pursuit of her arguments in chapters 1-4, 6. Her collaborator Melissa Trimingham, who wrote chapter 5, teaches puppetry and object theatre at the University of Kent. Her research on Oskar Schlemmer and the Bauhaus anchors her contribution to this volume. Their level of archival access makes the book well worth the attention of practitioners both inside the classroom and out by providing diverse images of garments, designers' renderings, and rehearsal photos.

In her introduction Barbieri states that she "intends to provide...