Description: "We all know what a trench coat is but where does it comes from? What began as a sports coat was later adapted for officers fighting in the trenches of the First World War, hence the name. Since then trench coats have adorned soldiers, police detectives, Nazis, Hollywood stars, Mafiosi, spies and 'flashers.' Ernest Hemingway wore one to draw attention to his military service, but the trench coat also turns up in the work of James Joyce, Nancy Mitford, Graham Greene and Virginia Woolf. Trench Coat explores its role in the modern imagination: a product of science and technology, the trench coat quickly took on a tough and seductive image blending easily into literature, music, film and fashion to become the uniform of some of the most attractive and enigmatic characters of the modern world"--
Brief description: Jane Tynan is Assistant Professor of Design History and Theory, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Review Quotes:
"Trench Coat maps the extraordinary lives of this seemingly simple garment, which emerged from early industrialized warfare to become the screen for a multitude of projected dreams, fears and desires across the 20th century to the present. Jane Tynan's material and cultural history charts the evolution of a coat that is practical yet cryptic, hyper-visible but concealing, possessed of vitality whilst also a form of camouflage." --Rachel Woodward, Professor of Human Geography, Newcastle University, UK
"Jane Tynan's Trench Coat is a delight - richly informative and written in prose as stylish as the object it describes. Uncovering the 'dark and dangerous energy' behind this icon of modernity, Tynan vividly captures the trench coat's perennial appeal." --Catherine Spooner, Professor of Literature and Culture, Lancaster University, UK, and author of Fashioning Gothic Bodies