Fashion & Anti-Fashion by Ted Polhemus
A new and updated edition of Ted Polhemus’ first book Fashion & Anti-Fashion is now available as a digital edition or print-on-demand
“What is fashion? What is style? What is the relationship between them? What sort of society generates one or the other?
These are some of the questions which intrigued me when I wrote my first book, Fashion & Anti-fashion in 1978.
And, interestingly, these questions have become central to understanding what is going on in fashion today – and what lies in store tomorrow. Indeed, as consumers increasingly reject a passive role as ‘fashion victims’ and exercise their own creativity in sampling & mixing a unique appearance ‘statement’ haven’t we entered a post-fashion age when style is where it is at?” – Ted Polhemus
When it was first published, in a review in New Society, Angela Carter described Fashion & Anti-fashion as a ‘delicious book’. With a new introduction and postscript, this new edition positions Fashion & Anti-fashion within the 21st century.
In exploring the shift from transient fashion to self-expressive style, Fashion & Anti-fashion simultaneously plots the journey from modernism to Blade Runner, from relentless ‘progress’ to constructive chaos in the Global Village – and, as such, will be of interest to those in cultural studies, marketing, semiotics, anthropology, design and fashion.
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