Extreme Beauty ─ The Body Transformed

This beautiful and thought-provoking book presents many of the extraordinary and diverse transformations that the body has endured in fashion over time and across cultures. It demonstrates that an undeniable beauty abides throughout the subtle and the radical manipulations that have occurred as part of the continuing evolution of the concept of beauty. Fashion has practiced extreme strategies to portray shifting concepts of the physical ideal. The physical areas of the body have been variously and strategically adjusted. They have been constricted, padded, truncated, or extended to achieve fashion's goal through subtle prostheses, and often, deliberate physical changes. Extreme Beauty incorporates striking examples from the past and present, from Africa, America, China, Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia to portray many of the specific ways this has happened.

Harold Koda is Curator of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.