D-Crit Chapbook 2: DRESS

Undressing celebrity from Sarah Silverman to Metallica's James Hetfield, the second installment of SVA D-Crit's chapbook series, Dress, presents eleven design critics who dissect the fashion makeup of a wide array of public figures. Muammar Al-Gaddafi was partial to epaulets—and a gold cape, on occasion; teen blogger Tavi Gevinson poses in Repetto heels two sizes too big; blobist designer Karim Rashid craves crisply tailored suits, tickled pink from head to toe. Whether dictator, diva or designer, what these figures share in common is a rich array of personal props that act as visual leitmotifs containing meanings and messages beyond the season's latest trends and fads.

Untangling the sartorial signifiers and unique style of public figures from various corners of the pop culture circuit—including Julian Schnabel, Dora the Explorer, Steve Jobs and Pope Benedict XVI—Dress assembles eleven essays by writers from the School of Visual Arts' pioneering Design Criticism MFA program, with illustrations by Peter Arkle. Derrick Mead considers dress as a metaphor in examining an icon of the New York skyline, Stephanie Jönsson judges Pope Benedict XVI's wardrobe more aesthetic than ascetic, and Angela Riechers recalls the moment when Karl Lagerfeld lost the Fan—and the fat. Whether art directed by stylists or left to their own devices, each subject gives ample evidence that even if clothes don't make the man, they certainly have an impact on the way we perceive the man.

Comprising the second installment of D-Crit's chapbook series, these essays were generated in Criticism Lab, a course taught by Andrea Codrington Lippke, a writer specializing in visual culture. Lippke edited Dress with D-Crit '11 graduate Aileen Kwun, a pop culture and design critic who received the Winterhouse Writing Award last fall for an analytical essay on Lady Gaga's architectural dress. Dress was designed by Walker Design and Matthew Rezac in Minneapolis.

D-Crit Chapbook 2: Dress can be purchased at Lulu.

The School of Visual Arts MFA in Design Criticism trains students to interrogate and evaluate design, architecture and urban infrastructure. Working alongside New York's most respected editors, authors, critics, curators and historians, students learn to hone their writerly voices and to communicate their unique perspectives through a range of media, including exhibitions, podcasts, events, blogs and books. Drawing on the broadest possible definition of design, the curriculum addresses graphic, interactive and product design as a well as fashion, urban planning and network systems.