Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up, Claire Wilcox, Circe Henestrosa

Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up is a vivid, multi-sensory portrait of one of the 20th century’s most iconic figures, told through the lens of clothing, adornment, and self-fashioning. Drawing on personal belongings—once locked away for decades in the Casa Azul and now revealed to the public—this richly illustrated volume offers an intimate glimpse into how Kahlo constructed her image at the crossroads of tradition, trauma, and artistry.

From Tehuana dresses and hand-painted corsets to eyebrow pencil and perfume bottles, each object speaks to the ways Kahlo transformed the everyday into performance and resistance. Blending fashion history, biography, and cultural commentary, the book reveals how dress became both her armor and her canvas—a deeply personal language through which she asserted identity, defied convention, and blurred the lines between life and art.

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About the Author
Claire Wilcox, Senior Curator of Fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum, is renowned for her landmark exhibitions and sensitive readings of dress as a form of expression. Circe Henestrosa, an independent curator and academic, brings a decolonial and interdisciplinary lens to fashion curation, particularly in the context of Mexican cultural heritage. Together, they craft exhibitions and texts that foreground the body as both subject and storyteller.

Publication date: 2018
Publisher: V&A Publishing
Pages: 256
ISBN:  9781851779604