Glamour is one of the most tantalizing and bewitching aspects of contemporary culture - but also one of the most elusive.
The aura of celebrity, the style of the fashion world, the vanity of the rich and beautiful, and the publicity-driven rites of café society are all imbued with its
irresistible magnetism. But what exactly is glamour? Where does it come from? How old is it? And can anyone quite capture its magic?
Stephen Gundle answers all these questions and more in this first ever history of the phenomenon, from Paris in the tumultuous final decades of the
eighteenth century through to Hollywood, New York, and Monte Carlo in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from Napoleon to Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, from Beau Brummell to Gianni Versace.
Throughout, the book captures the excitement and sex appeal of glamour while
exposing its mechanisms and exploring its sleazy and sometimes tragic underside. As Gundle shows, while glamour is exciting and magnetic, its promise is ultimately an illusion that can only ever be partially fulfilled.
Introduction
1. Walter Scott and the origins of glamour
2. Building the shopping city in London and Paris
3. The birth of sex appeal
4. Wealth and style in the gilded age
5. Café society and the publicity phenomenon
6. The Hollywood star system
7. The Riviera
touch
8. Glamour for the masses
9. Photography and the public image
10. Style, pastiche, and excess
11. Harlots and heiresses
Conclusion
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Stephen Gundle is Professor of Film and Television Studies at Warwick University, having previously taught at Royal Holloway, University of London and both Oxford and Cambridge universities. He has written widely about Italian and European culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his
work focusing especially on the mass media, the cultural aspects of politics and fashion, and the impact of American modernity on European popular culture.
