" . . . Ultimately, more than 10 million visitors engaged with American fashion at the New York World's Fair 1939-40, crystallizing a collective consciousness around American fashion and individual designers that fostered success of American fashion in the years that followed. In exploring fashion at the New York World's Fair 1939-40, this dissertation brings attention to a subject that has been largely ignored by scholars. Today, the New York World's Fair 1939-40 is best remembered for the streamlined industrial design aesthetic and the ascendant role of private corporations in creating a future vision of American consumerism. Scholarship around the New York World's Fair 1939-1940 has centered on the activities of men, especially the work of male industrial designers who were engaged to create the conceptual and aesthetic look of the Fair. Fashion at the New York World's Fair is the story about women's achievements and has been ignored. This dissertation centers gender as a factor in the early challenges that surrounded planning for fashion at the New York World's Fair 1939-40 and recovers the contributions of Marcia Conner and Mary Lewis in launching American fashion at the New York World's Fair 1939-1940. In addition, this dissertation creates a framework for understanding how the New York World's Fair 1939-1940 functioned as a crucible for collective consciousness around the American fashion and its individual designers that secured validation in the eyes of the public"-- from Abstract.

This qualifying paper explores the role that fashion played in the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadow in Queens, New York. How was fashion integrated into the development and design of the fair? Did the attempt to include fashion differ between the fashion industry and other industries present at the fair? With international representation, did involvement differ between countries present at the fair? What role – if any – did American fashion designers have at the fair? To answer these questions, I examined the New York Public Library World’s Fair archive extensively, as well as other historical collections. The results are presented in the form of an exhibition proposal, an interpretive plan that could be used in future to share these important primary source documents, mainly photographs, with a wider audience. This rich resource of materials has not yet been exhibited or seen by the public, aside from individual researchers accessing the collection. I believe that using an object-based approach with accompanying didactics allows an accessible entry point into the many sociopolitical, economic and fashion historical context surrounding each object. I found that the official themes for each year of the fair – The World of Tomorrow (1939) and For Peace and Freedom (1940) - doubled as undercurrent themes found in the incorporation of fashion in the fair over both years. Therefore, I organized the two main sections of the exhibition under those titles. The last section playfully explores fashion in fair merchandising and the press, paralleling as a virtual “exit through the gift shop” for exhibition attendees.

Photographic tour of best-loved world's fair: the 700-foot-tall Trylon, the 200-foot-wide Perisphere, GM's Futurama ride, 3-D movies, Elektro the 7-foot-tall robot, artwork by Dali and Calder, much more. 155 photographs, map.

After enduring 10 harrowing years of the Great Depression, visitors to the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair found welcome relief in the fair's optimistic presentation of the "World of Tomorrow." Pavilions from America's largest corporations and dozens of countries were spread across a 1,216-acre site, showcasing the latest industrial marvels and predictions for the future intermingled with cultural displays from around the world. Well known for its theme structures, the Trylon and Perisphere, the fair was an intriguing mixture of technology, science, architecture, showmanship, and politics. Proclaimed by many as the most memorable world's fair ever held, it predicted wonderful times were ahead for the world even as the clouds of war were gathering. Through vintage photographs, most never published before, The 1939-1940 New York World's Fair recaptures those days when the eyes of the world were on New York and on the future.

The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair was the largest international exhibition ever built in the United States. More than one hundred fifty pavilions and exhibits spread over six hundred forty-six acres helped the fair live up to its reputation as "the Billion-Dollar Fair." With the cold war in full swing, the fair offered visitors a refreshingly positive view of the future, mirroring the official theme: Peace through Understanding. Guests could travel back in time through a display of full-sized dinosaurs, or look into a future where underwater hotels and flying cars were commonplace. They could enjoy Walt Disney's popular shows, or study actual spacecraft flown in orbit. More than fifty-one million guests visited the fair before it closed forever in 1965. The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair captures the history of this event through vintage photographs, published here for the first time.

This work is a comparative study of the three "great" American wars of the 20th century: World War I, World War II and Vietnam. The book explores several aspects of American popular culture, like fashion, film and societal mores. While a number of books have covered fashion during individual wars, this is the first study to compare several major conflicts, drawing some conclusions regarding the lasting influences of wardrobe over an entire century. This book provides short background information for each war, briefly covering earlier conflicts that shaped the hostilities of the 20th century. Although the emphasis is on women's clothing, participation and service, men are not ignored. Their fashions not only speak to the times, but the enormity of their sacrifices.

Analyse: Photographies de Richard Wurts, Carl van Vechten, Samuel H. Gottscho, Underwood & Underwood, Sigurd Fisher et Michael L. Radoslovich.