Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism

by Eugene Rabkin

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, fashion has undergone a paradoxical it has grown creatively impoverished despite becoming more culturally relevant. Increasingly, the industry’s output feels listless, unexciting, like a pastiche of past styles, not genuine innovation. What caused this? How did fashion design get reduced to logoed merch? Why does spectacle outweigh reality? How did business priorities come to eclipse creativity? Eugene Rabkin — founder of StyleZeitgeist magazine and noted fashion journalist, lecturer, and critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Financial Times, and The Business of Fashion — offers an unflinching answer. Fashion and Postmodernism examines how the postmodern turn, with its dismantling of hierarchies and embracing of commerciality, its democratization of taste and reliance on irony and poptimism, has undermined fashion. Across ten incisive chapters, these pages trace the industry’s journey from an era that produced Alexander McQueen’s theatrical genius, Helmut Lang’s modernism, and Martin Margiela’s conceptual rigor to an era dominated by corporations and celebrities. Along the way, Rabkin shows how the image is decoupled from its substance, how commerce has overridden editorial authority, and how fashion’s relationship with the arts has shifted from symbiotic to parasitic.

Genres: Fashion, Nonfiction

197 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 25, 2026

Reviews

[sarah joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

an articulate account as to why fashion is no longer exciting, the most intriguing reason being the loss of the authority of the critic—brands themselves have become producers and patrons of culture dictating what is good; without defined standards and desires to meaningfully connect to history, there is nothing for fashion to do—to react against—but merely remix endlessly in celebrity-fueled fine-art-adjacent collaborations in the never-ending pursuit of newness

« In fashion’s postmodern period, the primary job of fashion companies’ marketing and PR departments is not just continuous creation of new signs but also destruction of the established relationships between the signifier and the signified, and their rebuilding in the service of commerce. »

[Merve Kisacik · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a fan of Rabkin and StyleZeitgeist, I knew I would absolutely love this book the moment I pre-ordered it, and I’m glad to report that I was not wrong. This is a concise but all-encompassing account of everything that is wrong with the “fashion industry" today and how we got here. I usually disagree with the authors on some points, even when I thoroughly enjoy their book, but I have no notes for this one. The sarcastic tone, especially of the last chapter, is a great conclusion to this brilliant book. And the manifesto somehow makes complete sense to a pessimist like me, so who knows, maybe there is hope for us after all!

[Timon Sautter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr interessant, mit sehr fashion-nerdigen Ausflügen und Abwandlungen von klassischem Marxismus und Frankfurter Schule.

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything true, nothing new.