Fear and clothing : unbuckling American style

Title:

Author:

Wilson, Cintra.

Personal Author:

Wilson, Cintra.

ISBN:

9780393081893

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

ix, 321 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Abstract:

Wilson reports the findings of her "fashion road trip" across the United States, a journey that took three years and ranges across the various economic "belt regions" of America: the Cotton, Rust, Bible, Sun, Frost, Corn, and Gun Belts. Acting as a kind of fashion anthropologist, she documents and decodes the sartorial sensibilities of Americans across the country. Our fashion choices, she argues, contain a riot of visual cues that tell everyone instantly who we are, where we came from, where we feel we belong, what we want, where we are going, and how we expect to be treated when we get there.-- from publisher's description.

Subject Term:

Clothing and dress.

Fashion.

Geographic Term:

United States -- Social life and customs.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Main Library	Book	391.009 W747	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In this smart and rollicking book, Wilson illustrates how every closet is a declaration of the owner's politics, sexuality, class, education, hopes, and dreams. With her signature wit and utterly irreverent humor, Wilson proves that, by donning our daily costume, we create our future selves, for good or ill. Indeed: your fate hangs in your closet. Dress wisely.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Irreverent, outspoken culture critic Wilson (Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny, 2008, etc.) charts the "discovery of my own fashion evolution" through an American road trip. Armed with her unique talent for biting observational wizardry, the author embarked on a cross-country walkabout to gain new perspectives on fashion's impact "with as little an impression as possible going in." She approached this journey with the same modest naivet as when perusing uptight Soho and Madison Avenue boutiques to offer an outsider's perspective for the New York Times "Critical Shopper" column. Before decrypting the unique couture dress codes throughout America's "belt regions" (Cotton, Rust, Bible, etc.), Wilson offers background on her formative years growing up in the 1970s on a houseboat in the Bay Area, where her artistic appreciation for the punk scene and the "magic of garments" was born. Fitted into her finest black, monotone clothing, Wilson's first stops included Washington, D.C., where restrictive, formal business wear and "confrontational cleanliness" rules; high-end consignment shops in modestly draped Salt Lake City; and one of the author's funniest inspections (aside from a piece relentlessly dehumanizing Los Angeles culture): the mini-monokini versus moneyed white-jeaned aesthetic of Miami Beach, where "the only good iguana is a pink belt." Midway through, Wilson digresses to address the 2009 fiasco surrounding a painfully honest yet offensively inciting column she wrote criticizing a new J.C. Penney flagship store for manufacturing polyester clothing "five times larger than any large you've ever seen." The article's backlash seemingly fueled her anxiety about traipsing further into Midwestern states like Iowa and camouflage-heavy Kansas. Ultimately, there's an undeniable sense that little falling outside of Wilson's own gothic "crypto-sadist" uniform is deemed passable, with the remaining scraps merely fashion roadkill. Nevertheless, her deliciously snarky ode to American fashion is unceasingly entertaining. Prime sartorial satire for fashionistas aching for a dose of comic relief. Few write as bitingly about pop culture as Wilson. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.