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Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style
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. With this philosophy in hand, she tackles and unpacks the meaning behind the uniforms of Washington DC politicians and their wives, the costumes of Kentucky Derby spectators, the attractive draw of the cowboy hat in Wyoming, and what she terms the "stealth wealth" of distressed clothing in Brooklyn.
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.
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.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published September 8, 2015
46 people are currently reading
821 people want to read
About the author
Cintra Wilson
10 books59 followersCintra Wilson is a playwright, novelist, and a past columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, Salon, and the New York Times. She lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 88 reviews
November 30, 2015
Whether fashion, film, social groups, art, music, history, or even sports, I like any kind of fanatic. I like people pushing a thing until it breaks its bounds. I like people who can cobble together something new out of bits and pieces of the old. People who obsess over a thing so long, they start seeing new angles.
But most of all, I love the writing of Cintra Wilson. Ever since my wife Wendy told me about her first book, A Massive Swelling, I’ve been a Cintra-phile, and then some. I read her novel (Colors Insulting to Nature) and her bleak satire/political tract (Caligula For President), but it’s this book that I’ve been craving.
Five years ago, Wilson ended a multi-year run of writing the “Critical Shopper” column for The New York Times. In it, she reported on new and venerable New York fashion stores, giving us an inside look into the strangeness, wonder, horror and sometimes joy of fashion at all levels. Fear & Clothing originally started as a re-written compendium of the NYT pieces before Wilson decided to apply semiotics, theory, and country-wide travel to the equation.
Fear & Clothing, as the title punnily suggests, is written with nods to Hunter S. Thompson: it moves from location to location, less interested in stats and whitepapers, trends or demographics, and more on “taking the temperature” of a place to get the underlying patterns and impressions of an area. Of Thompson’s book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 (one of my favorite non-fiction books, and the one I’ve read the most number of times), one former White House aide referred to it as “the most true and least accurate account of the ’72 campaign ever written.” Comment thread shouters that criticize Wilson’s tactics try to accuse her of stereotyping, or diminish her insights by demanding facts and stats, which they would also try to dismiss and diminish. Her account might or might not always be accurate, but it’s damn sure 100% true.
Wilson refracts the whole adventure through this type of impressionistic reportage, and like Thompson, this including scrutinizing herself for examples of her demented obsession or perceived weaknesses. For example, it's in the amplified slutty environs of Miami Beach where she realizes that she’s been using black as a guiding principle for so long, it’s become a type of armor.
Colors show too much emotion. Colors are vulnerable. Black is stylish, but it’s also protective. It’s very New York. In fact, her outfit on the author pic is a black leather jacket (featuring upside-down patches of both the American flag and the New York Times masthead, signifying a state of distress for both) and giant black sunglasses, with only her Candy Fuckin' Apple Red lipstick for contrast. Same with the cover image, in which black leather pants, a thick wrist band and an ornamental shark-fin-style fascinator (accessorized with a drink and a smoke) push you away and disinvite you from the party. By the end of the book, she acknowledges that black is not the new anything, and promises to evolve.
The joy of the original New York Times source articles (which are hilarious, and can [and should] be read at cintrawilson.com) is the crazed joy of the way she hacks into the thickets surrounding even the most avant-garde fashion houses and retail outlets, finding the improbable comfort in a $4000 coat, or goggling at items clearly not meant for humans. She struggles with an 18-armed tunic, stares down unimpressed sales drones asleep in the dream of their eventual rise to designers or curators who won’t have to answer dumb questions from customers, and dazzles us with a sharp, nasty, hilarious stream of insanity as she gags incredulously on what the ultra-rich spend their money to signify. It’s not just status symbols, it’s messages. Semiotics. Homing beacons.
The whole book is messages. Wilson claims that every area she traveled – from the heartland to the Corn Belt, the Mormon headquarters or the seat of our nation’s government – people dress deliberately, no matter how sloppily or rigidly, and they dress to tell a story, whether that story is “outta my way!” or “eh.” Often, the story is assimilation – fashion used as a means to disappear into the societal foliage. Wilson, on the other hand, strides into the picture with a mighty, bellowing declaration – FASHION SHOULD INSPIRE FEAR!!! (John Waters would be tickled, no doubt – why didn’t they get HIM for a back-cover blurb?) Her great wish for civilization is that everyone should be free to find their own style and pursue it relentlessly. When I asked her, via Reddit AMA, how to finally start looking for my own style after 40 years of believing that “fashion is none of my business,” she said that the great thing about fashion right now is that there is no fashion. There is no “there” there. For the past 25 years, at least, fashion is a complete free-for-all. “Go out and get that cheetah-print jumpsuit!” she howled with encouragement.
And you know what? It has changed me! I look around and I see fashion icons everywhere! I saw an older lady – at least 75 if she was a day – with a tightly-coiffed head of short, jet-black hair, pink shades with dark lenses, pink slacks, and salmon pink cardigan sweater with a black Miles Davis t-shirt inside. Reader, I swooned. So unassuming at first glance, yet so elegant and cool. She could have been a reincarnation of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, for all I knew. Or she could have just been a cool mofo who wasn’t about to succumb to lycra and daises just because she was a decade-plus into her AARP benefits.
One of the best things about the book is Wilson’s declaration that even people who don’t consider themselves to be stylish or possessing of a style really and truly do. As she interrogates a Wyoming cowboy about his fashion choices – where did you get those exquisite boots!? – he becomes visibly embarrassed. “I’m not trying to be stylish…it’s just function!” But you are stylish, sir…rather than tying your bandanna around your neck, you chose to thread it through a hollowed-out antler. That’s stylish! “But that’s just because it always comes untied!” he protests. In this moment, when both people are talking past one another, we get to the deeper point of Wilson’s assessment. Style is functionality. It’s a story of who you are and what you do, and how you project to the world. Clothes keep you warm in sub-zero Wyoming nights, but they also let others know that you are extremely competent at your job! You aren’t just a cowboy – you’re a cowboy who knows enough to not let your bandana go slack! You’re a cowboy who knows to get the good boots (Schnee’s brand) with the leather and the rubber in all the right places. In the South, you know to dress to impress a husband (Wilson’s most vicious attacks right now are coming from Southern ladies who believe her description of them as using predatory femininity to “snare” a man is stereotyped), or if you’re a dude, you dress down to let the women shine.
In Washington DC, you dress like a peacock if a man (generals with decorations) or like a helpless woman-child (their aides) to reinforce the desired power dynamic. In Iowa, style is open-armed, quiet but real. When people kick back against her assertions that they are stylish, it’s not against the concept of dressing well (everybody wants to be told they look nice!), but against what they assume is some coastal liberal elitist’s belief that what they’re doing is “up to snuff.” Wilson practically bends over like an Eastern European gymnast here to tell us, again and again, that her love of the best fashion choices in Iowa, Utah, Washington D.C., Wyoming, or Savannah are in no way condescending or lesser than the wild, free-form fashion styles she learned from “punks and drag queens” growing up in San Francisco and New York. Every time you see a person with personal style, as I did with my Miles Davis/cardigan style icon on the Harlem Avenue southbound bus, you’re seeing someone creating a new language. You’re seeing a part of the inner person. You’re seeing a person who resists some or all of their tribal rules and societal dicta to find a thing within them that makes them feel larger, that creates a primal spark the moment they seem themselves in a mirror, something that brings out subtle notes and tendencies in that person. Makes them more themself than before.
Wilson’s first book, A Massive Swelling, is still far funnier, but it gets to be, because when you’re writing about something that’s so abhorrent and unlovable as celebrity vanity, your arsenal requires nothing but poison darts and bludgeons. Stun and bash, stun and bash. Nobody will cry for those they leave behind. As she writes in the foreword, “The slandering of iconage is a sport – not an act of aggression or bitterness, but an exercise.” Similarly, Caligula for President is funny, but so bleak in its worldview, the idea of having to explain a way out of this self-replicating maze of corruption and evil hardly seems necessary. Wilson seems to even scare herself a bit with the futility of it all when she says, in the voice of a resurrected Caligula, “You will love being hopeless. The good news is, you’re at least halfway there.”
It’s harder to laugh heartily when speaking in love, in admiration and non-sadistic enjoyment. This is the best surprise of the book, the fact that Wilson can write admiringly of people and still be funny and charming and perceptive. That’s hard for anyone to do, and considering her track record, it makes this book a beautiful yang to A Massive Swelling’s yin.
The book is seasoned with street photos, visual examples of Good Style captured from around the country. Study them well. Some thrive because they stand apart from the codes and messages required by their locales. Others takes those messages and refine them into perfection. More often than not, the winner is not the person with the biggest closet or the hardiest credit limit. Wilson notes that the most stylish person she saw at the Kentucky Derby was a waiter carrying out drinks on a tray. The costliest resource you need to spend is time. Time and pride. Time to experiment, to pick up and shuck off, to risk embarrassment in public in the hopes of a potentially great and radical look. You have to make it a part of the constellation of things you think about on a regular basis. It’s a form of betterment, ultimately, something that can make you feel more secure in your body (and, by extension, your mind), a choice that refines your daily decisions and destiny. Who could ask more of a lowly pocket square?
Wilson argues that we can all make ourselves into art. It needn’t be fancy or expensive, or trumpeted as capital-F Fashion. You all have at least friend who has good style, either overtly or secretly, and they work with what they have, and they’ve done it over years of trial and error. That’s all there is to it. And when it’s done, Cintra Wilson will be there to tell you, “you rocked it, rocker!”
Not that I want to leave you with the impression that this is sappy or simpering or rah-rah Oprah fare. Cintra Wilson is still as funny, acidic, and linguistically precise as ever. Speaking of Washington DC’s current crop of Young Republicans, she says, “They seemed to share an abrasive, stinging kind of confrontational cleanliness, as if they had all just graduated from Brigham Young University with their virginity intact, and celebrated by being shaken and poured into the nation’s capital from an icy tumbler full of Pine-Sol, pumice, and the New Testament.”
The section on New York (sourced largely from the NYT columns) is far and away the funniest, a sort of Connecticut Yankee in King Lagerfeld’s Court. One particular target was ultra-abstract clothier Marni, which seemed to be built for non-humans. “An ocher velvet toga seemed to be formalwear for an inflatable Macy’s parade version of Barney Rubble ($785). A jumbo bathrobe sweater ($775) had enough volume to house a sumo wrestler and the back end of a pantomime horse. I dubbed the collection ‘Gargantua and Pantaloons,’ because, like Rabelais, I respected it but couldn’t get into it.” Compare, also, her take on Midwest hunter lifestyle store Cabela’s (“Funnel cakes are sold outside the front doors, next to a bronze statue of an elk huge enough to look size-appropriately threatening next to a bronze Stalin”) with New York’s bougie equivalent, Beretta, which offers “Zebra throw pillows ($350) [to] go with zebra-hide ottomans ($6,500)…a leather game book records Shoot, Guns, Bag, and Remark ($185). For the man who hates ostriches, there are wallets, as well as large eggs on ornamental chrome stands ($250).”
Wilson doesn’t just critique current style. She reminds us that today’s kitsch fashion photoblogs, where we laugh at wide lapels and thick, droopy mustaches, were once as up-to-the-minute as it got. “One must bear in mind that the mutton-chopped man in yellow plaid pants wasn’t always a punchline – he was hip, once. He was the wife-stealing Casanova of the country club before mass production stole his flair, turned it out viral in Dacron, and rendered him the type of guy who sells wholesale waterbeds.” In fact, all of the most dangerous style trends are now perpetually with us, churning endlessly in the agitator, bringing different pants and different blouses to the top of the pile, all of them seen before. Or, put more pithily, “The symbols of social transgression inevitably become the hand towels of colonialism.”
But like personal freedom and oil, USA’s cultural dominance on the world stage is starting to dry up. After a demoralizing visit to a Calvin Klein store, at which all the sizes seemed small even by NYC waif standards, she is brusquely told that CK’s brand is much more popular in Japan now than the USA, and they have the discretionary income for it. “I never realized how much everything buyable had been attuned to American cultural preferences,” says Wilson, “from candy and yogurt flavors to comedy films to electronic beeping sounds. We were once the gravitational center of the aesthetic universe, and at Calvin Klein, for the first time, I realized we weren’t anymore.”
In fact, as USA fashion goes, there center cannot hold because there IS no center. Not really, anyway. Looking at a fashion mag from 1970 and another from 1980, it could come from two different worlds. Every new, daring idea is buried within 10 years as new thinkers and rebels take the stage. Maybe not so much these days.
Rather than seeing this as something to fear, Wilson again asserts that, for aspiring fashionistas and those simply wishing to improve their look, this is the ultimate opportunity. Even if there’s nothing to kick against, there’s also nothing stopping you from pushing off in any direction you please, whether neon shades and homemade sequined wimple, or furry vest with matching cummerbund.
Reading this was such a joy, I just hated to finish it, and already, I can’t wait to read it again. Even if you think you don’t care about fashion or are over snarky humor, I’d urge you to check this out. Wilson’s journey across the USA is fascinating on its own terms, giving you a look not just at how people cover themselves, but all the ways they open up. Also: you get to find out just why those cowboy hats stay on, even in a snowstorm!
Five years, and worth every second of the wait. Top recommendation.
But most of all, I love the writing of Cintra Wilson. Ever since my wife Wendy told me about her first book, A Massive Swelling, I’ve been a Cintra-phile, and then some. I read her novel (Colors Insulting to Nature) and her bleak satire/political tract (Caligula For President), but it’s this book that I’ve been craving.
Five years ago, Wilson ended a multi-year run of writing the “Critical Shopper” column for The New York Times. In it, she reported on new and venerable New York fashion stores, giving us an inside look into the strangeness, wonder, horror and sometimes joy of fashion at all levels. Fear & Clothing originally started as a re-written compendium of the NYT pieces before Wilson decided to apply semiotics, theory, and country-wide travel to the equation.
Fear & Clothing, as the title punnily suggests, is written with nods to Hunter S. Thompson: it moves from location to location, less interested in stats and whitepapers, trends or demographics, and more on “taking the temperature” of a place to get the underlying patterns and impressions of an area. Of Thompson’s book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 (one of my favorite non-fiction books, and the one I’ve read the most number of times), one former White House aide referred to it as “the most true and least accurate account of the ’72 campaign ever written.” Comment thread shouters that criticize Wilson’s tactics try to accuse her of stereotyping, or diminish her insights by demanding facts and stats, which they would also try to dismiss and diminish. Her account might or might not always be accurate, but it’s damn sure 100% true.
Wilson refracts the whole adventure through this type of impressionistic reportage, and like Thompson, this including scrutinizing herself for examples of her demented obsession or perceived weaknesses. For example, it's in the amplified slutty environs of Miami Beach where she realizes that she’s been using black as a guiding principle for so long, it’s become a type of armor.
By my own metrics, my wardrobe was psychologically ridiculous. My total mistrust of God, country, sex, and my fellow human beings was literally right on the floor of my hotel room. All my clothes were black, shiny, barbed, spiky, predatory – absurdly contrary and menacing. I obviously had some issues to address. Basically, my fashion statement boiled down to one word: No.
Colors show too much emotion. Colors are vulnerable. Black is stylish, but it’s also protective. It’s very New York. In fact, her outfit on the author pic is a black leather jacket (featuring upside-down patches of both the American flag and the New York Times masthead, signifying a state of distress for both) and giant black sunglasses, with only her Candy Fuckin' Apple Red lipstick for contrast. Same with the cover image, in which black leather pants, a thick wrist band and an ornamental shark-fin-style fascinator (accessorized with a drink and a smoke) push you away and disinvite you from the party. By the end of the book, she acknowledges that black is not the new anything, and promises to evolve.
The joy of the original New York Times source articles (which are hilarious, and can [and should] be read at cintrawilson.com) is the crazed joy of the way she hacks into the thickets surrounding even the most avant-garde fashion houses and retail outlets, finding the improbable comfort in a $4000 coat, or goggling at items clearly not meant for humans. She struggles with an 18-armed tunic, stares down unimpressed sales drones asleep in the dream of their eventual rise to designers or curators who won’t have to answer dumb questions from customers, and dazzles us with a sharp, nasty, hilarious stream of insanity as she gags incredulously on what the ultra-rich spend their money to signify. It’s not just status symbols, it’s messages. Semiotics. Homing beacons.
The whole book is messages. Wilson claims that every area she traveled – from the heartland to the Corn Belt, the Mormon headquarters or the seat of our nation’s government – people dress deliberately, no matter how sloppily or rigidly, and they dress to tell a story, whether that story is “outta my way!” or “eh.” Often, the story is assimilation – fashion used as a means to disappear into the societal foliage. Wilson, on the other hand, strides into the picture with a mighty, bellowing declaration – FASHION SHOULD INSPIRE FEAR!!! (John Waters would be tickled, no doubt – why didn’t they get HIM for a back-cover blurb?) Her great wish for civilization is that everyone should be free to find their own style and pursue it relentlessly. When I asked her, via Reddit AMA, how to finally start looking for my own style after 40 years of believing that “fashion is none of my business,” she said that the great thing about fashion right now is that there is no fashion. There is no “there” there. For the past 25 years, at least, fashion is a complete free-for-all. “Go out and get that cheetah-print jumpsuit!” she howled with encouragement.
And you know what? It has changed me! I look around and I see fashion icons everywhere! I saw an older lady – at least 75 if she was a day – with a tightly-coiffed head of short, jet-black hair, pink shades with dark lenses, pink slacks, and salmon pink cardigan sweater with a black Miles Davis t-shirt inside. Reader, I swooned. So unassuming at first glance, yet so elegant and cool. She could have been a reincarnation of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, for all I knew. Or she could have just been a cool mofo who wasn’t about to succumb to lycra and daises just because she was a decade-plus into her AARP benefits.
One of the best things about the book is Wilson’s declaration that even people who don’t consider themselves to be stylish or possessing of a style really and truly do. As she interrogates a Wyoming cowboy about his fashion choices – where did you get those exquisite boots!? – he becomes visibly embarrassed. “I’m not trying to be stylish…it’s just function!” But you are stylish, sir…rather than tying your bandanna around your neck, you chose to thread it through a hollowed-out antler. That’s stylish! “But that’s just because it always comes untied!” he protests. In this moment, when both people are talking past one another, we get to the deeper point of Wilson’s assessment. Style is functionality. It’s a story of who you are and what you do, and how you project to the world. Clothes keep you warm in sub-zero Wyoming nights, but they also let others know that you are extremely competent at your job! You aren’t just a cowboy – you’re a cowboy who knows enough to not let your bandana go slack! You’re a cowboy who knows to get the good boots (Schnee’s brand) with the leather and the rubber in all the right places. In the South, you know to dress to impress a husband (Wilson’s most vicious attacks right now are coming from Southern ladies who believe her description of them as using predatory femininity to “snare” a man is stereotyped), or if you’re a dude, you dress down to let the women shine.
In Washington DC, you dress like a peacock if a man (generals with decorations) or like a helpless woman-child (their aides) to reinforce the desired power dynamic. In Iowa, style is open-armed, quiet but real. When people kick back against her assertions that they are stylish, it’s not against the concept of dressing well (everybody wants to be told they look nice!), but against what they assume is some coastal liberal elitist’s belief that what they’re doing is “up to snuff.” Wilson practically bends over like an Eastern European gymnast here to tell us, again and again, that her love of the best fashion choices in Iowa, Utah, Washington D.C., Wyoming, or Savannah are in no way condescending or lesser than the wild, free-form fashion styles she learned from “punks and drag queens” growing up in San Francisco and New York. Every time you see a person with personal style, as I did with my Miles Davis/cardigan style icon on the Harlem Avenue southbound bus, you’re seeing someone creating a new language. You’re seeing a part of the inner person. You’re seeing a person who resists some or all of their tribal rules and societal dicta to find a thing within them that makes them feel larger, that creates a primal spark the moment they seem themselves in a mirror, something that brings out subtle notes and tendencies in that person. Makes them more themself than before.
Wilson’s first book, A Massive Swelling, is still far funnier, but it gets to be, because when you’re writing about something that’s so abhorrent and unlovable as celebrity vanity, your arsenal requires nothing but poison darts and bludgeons. Stun and bash, stun and bash. Nobody will cry for those they leave behind. As she writes in the foreword, “The slandering of iconage is a sport – not an act of aggression or bitterness, but an exercise.” Similarly, Caligula for President is funny, but so bleak in its worldview, the idea of having to explain a way out of this self-replicating maze of corruption and evil hardly seems necessary. Wilson seems to even scare herself a bit with the futility of it all when she says, in the voice of a resurrected Caligula, “You will love being hopeless. The good news is, you’re at least halfway there.”
It’s harder to laugh heartily when speaking in love, in admiration and non-sadistic enjoyment. This is the best surprise of the book, the fact that Wilson can write admiringly of people and still be funny and charming and perceptive. That’s hard for anyone to do, and considering her track record, it makes this book a beautiful yang to A Massive Swelling’s yin.
The book is seasoned with street photos, visual examples of Good Style captured from around the country. Study them well. Some thrive because they stand apart from the codes and messages required by their locales. Others takes those messages and refine them into perfection. More often than not, the winner is not the person with the biggest closet or the hardiest credit limit. Wilson notes that the most stylish person she saw at the Kentucky Derby was a waiter carrying out drinks on a tray. The costliest resource you need to spend is time. Time and pride. Time to experiment, to pick up and shuck off, to risk embarrassment in public in the hopes of a potentially great and radical look. You have to make it a part of the constellation of things you think about on a regular basis. It’s a form of betterment, ultimately, something that can make you feel more secure in your body (and, by extension, your mind), a choice that refines your daily decisions and destiny. Who could ask more of a lowly pocket square?
Wilson argues that we can all make ourselves into art. It needn’t be fancy or expensive, or trumpeted as capital-F Fashion. You all have at least friend who has good style, either overtly or secretly, and they work with what they have, and they’ve done it over years of trial and error. That’s all there is to it. And when it’s done, Cintra Wilson will be there to tell you, “you rocked it, rocker!”
Not that I want to leave you with the impression that this is sappy or simpering or rah-rah Oprah fare. Cintra Wilson is still as funny, acidic, and linguistically precise as ever. Speaking of Washington DC’s current crop of Young Republicans, she says, “They seemed to share an abrasive, stinging kind of confrontational cleanliness, as if they had all just graduated from Brigham Young University with their virginity intact, and celebrated by being shaken and poured into the nation’s capital from an icy tumbler full of Pine-Sol, pumice, and the New Testament.”
The section on New York (sourced largely from the NYT columns) is far and away the funniest, a sort of Connecticut Yankee in King Lagerfeld’s Court. One particular target was ultra-abstract clothier Marni, which seemed to be built for non-humans. “An ocher velvet toga seemed to be formalwear for an inflatable Macy’s parade version of Barney Rubble ($785). A jumbo bathrobe sweater ($775) had enough volume to house a sumo wrestler and the back end of a pantomime horse. I dubbed the collection ‘Gargantua and Pantaloons,’ because, like Rabelais, I respected it but couldn’t get into it.” Compare, also, her take on Midwest hunter lifestyle store Cabela’s (“Funnel cakes are sold outside the front doors, next to a bronze statue of an elk huge enough to look size-appropriately threatening next to a bronze Stalin”) with New York’s bougie equivalent, Beretta, which offers “Zebra throw pillows ($350) [to] go with zebra-hide ottomans ($6,500)…a leather game book records Shoot, Guns, Bag, and Remark ($185). For the man who hates ostriches, there are wallets, as well as large eggs on ornamental chrome stands ($250).”
Wilson doesn’t just critique current style. She reminds us that today’s kitsch fashion photoblogs, where we laugh at wide lapels and thick, droopy mustaches, were once as up-to-the-minute as it got. “One must bear in mind that the mutton-chopped man in yellow plaid pants wasn’t always a punchline – he was hip, once. He was the wife-stealing Casanova of the country club before mass production stole his flair, turned it out viral in Dacron, and rendered him the type of guy who sells wholesale waterbeds.” In fact, all of the most dangerous style trends are now perpetually with us, churning endlessly in the agitator, bringing different pants and different blouses to the top of the pile, all of them seen before. Or, put more pithily, “The symbols of social transgression inevitably become the hand towels of colonialism.”
But like personal freedom and oil, USA’s cultural dominance on the world stage is starting to dry up. After a demoralizing visit to a Calvin Klein store, at which all the sizes seemed small even by NYC waif standards, she is brusquely told that CK’s brand is much more popular in Japan now than the USA, and they have the discretionary income for it. “I never realized how much everything buyable had been attuned to American cultural preferences,” says Wilson, “from candy and yogurt flavors to comedy films to electronic beeping sounds. We were once the gravitational center of the aesthetic universe, and at Calvin Klein, for the first time, I realized we weren’t anymore.”
In fact, as USA fashion goes, there center cannot hold because there IS no center. Not really, anyway. Looking at a fashion mag from 1970 and another from 1980, it could come from two different worlds. Every new, daring idea is buried within 10 years as new thinkers and rebels take the stage. Maybe not so much these days.
“Don’t look at the cover,” he said, putting it in my lap. “Just look at the spread.”
On the pages were images of fairly benign current looks – some Rick Owens-esuqe drapy stuff; an oversize contraption that wouldn’t look wholly out of place in the first Comme des Garcons look book; a girl with texturized bleach-blonde hair wearing a tissue-T under a distressed sequin minidress.
“Are you ready for this? This magazine is from 2000. This was eleven years ago.”
Gasp.
“It is my imagination,” he asked, “or has fashion stood absolutely still for the past ten years?”
He was absolutely right. I thought he could argue that nothing had changed in twenty-plus years, even.
Rather than seeing this as something to fear, Wilson again asserts that, for aspiring fashionistas and those simply wishing to improve their look, this is the ultimate opportunity. Even if there’s nothing to kick against, there’s also nothing stopping you from pushing off in any direction you please, whether neon shades and homemade sequined wimple, or furry vest with matching cummerbund.
Reading this was such a joy, I just hated to finish it, and already, I can’t wait to read it again. Even if you think you don’t care about fashion or are over snarky humor, I’d urge you to check this out. Wilson’s journey across the USA is fascinating on its own terms, giving you a look not just at how people cover themselves, but all the ways they open up. Also: you get to find out just why those cowboy hats stay on, even in a snowstorm!
Five years, and worth every second of the wait. Top recommendation.
February 7, 2016
I heard Wilson talking about this book on Marc Maron's podcast and she sounded, if a little high-octane, witty and smart. But while the introduction to this book rejects an idea that fashion is about living up to some objective ideal, Wilson spends most of it mocking her first impressions of people she doesn't know based on what they're wearing. On a flight to the mid-west, Wilson smugly observes that she is probably the only person on the plane reading Zizek, and in a J.C. Penney, she laments not being able to find a size 2 amid the the sizes 8-12 that garb the "obese mannequins." What could be an incisive and illuminating dive into regional American trends becomes instead a mean-spirited and rather useless book.
January 31, 2016
Advanced Reading Copy review Due to be published Sept. 8, 2015
First let me say that I don't have an appropriate shelf for fashion culture/criticism, but for this book a combination of art and humor will suffice.
Cintra Wilson writes about fashion for the Style section of the NY Times. As evidenced by her book's title "Fear and Clothing", she goes about it in a gonzo style with more than a healthy dose of New York snark. Traveling around the United States, she observes what people wear and postulates on how the culture of a region results in its peculiar style. As the book progresses so does the author as she learns to appreciate the political and sociological statements that clothes can make outside of the trendy fashion industry. Although I am not a fan of "Sex and the City" I see Ms. Wilson as a hipster version of Sarah Jessica Parker's character, swooning over shoes but then examining why and what it means.
This was at the bottom of my ARC pile and I only started it because of the Hunter S. Thompson reference. I'm glad I took the time though because it turned out to be entertaining and enlightening on a subject that usually only interests me when Project Runway is on. I'm not sure how it will play in middle America, but if Seinfeld and Sex and the City can be successful, this book has a shot.
First let me say that I don't have an appropriate shelf for fashion culture/criticism, but for this book a combination of art and humor will suffice.
Cintra Wilson writes about fashion for the Style section of the NY Times. As evidenced by her book's title "Fear and Clothing", she goes about it in a gonzo style with more than a healthy dose of New York snark. Traveling around the United States, she observes what people wear and postulates on how the culture of a region results in its peculiar style. As the book progresses so does the author as she learns to appreciate the political and sociological statements that clothes can make outside of the trendy fashion industry. Although I am not a fan of "Sex and the City" I see Ms. Wilson as a hipster version of Sarah Jessica Parker's character, swooning over shoes but then examining why and what it means.
This was at the bottom of my ARC pile and I only started it because of the Hunter S. Thompson reference. I'm glad I took the time though because it turned out to be entertaining and enlightening on a subject that usually only interests me when Project Runway is on. I'm not sure how it will play in middle America, but if Seinfeld and Sex and the City can be successful, this book has a shot.
May 11, 2016
I envision the author proudly creating long lists of over-the-top similes and metaphors, inserting several $2 words at random into each one, and then blindly pulling one out every page to force into the book regardless of context.
I had high hopes for this book. The goal is worthy, but the book does nothing to stay on track. Instead of describing fashion around the country, it is an excuse for the writer to insult every single person she can create a category for. It was painful to read. Utterly negative, headache-inducing long sentences were full of defense for herself and slams on everyone else on the planet.
Related, the photos are completely random, have nothing to do with the text they are placed in, and add nothing to the "story."
I often had no idea what the theme of the chapter I was in was supposed to be after the sections that were named after cities. It was as if someone just crammed a bunch of articles together to call it a book.
There were maybe three nuggets of good writing or wisdom that kept me hoping for better as I pushed to finish it, along with a distaste for reviewing books I don't finish. This was good: "I hope to persuade you that defaulting into an outfit the creative equivalent of a frozen pizza is in many was as self-sabotaging as choosing to wear a prison jumpsuit. Fashion is too joyful and important a way to empower yourself. I believe you should never allow anything into your closet that is less than a FUKK YEAH! expression of who you really are." However, sadly, this sentiment ended in the introduction. The rest of the book insulted every type of person's style.
I had high hopes for this book. The goal is worthy, but the book does nothing to stay on track. Instead of describing fashion around the country, it is an excuse for the writer to insult every single person she can create a category for. It was painful to read. Utterly negative, headache-inducing long sentences were full of defense for herself and slams on everyone else on the planet.
Related, the photos are completely random, have nothing to do with the text they are placed in, and add nothing to the "story."
I often had no idea what the theme of the chapter I was in was supposed to be after the sections that were named after cities. It was as if someone just crammed a bunch of articles together to call it a book.
There were maybe three nuggets of good writing or wisdom that kept me hoping for better as I pushed to finish it, along with a distaste for reviewing books I don't finish. This was good: "I hope to persuade you that defaulting into an outfit the creative equivalent of a frozen pizza is in many was as self-sabotaging as choosing to wear a prison jumpsuit. Fashion is too joyful and important a way to empower yourself. I believe you should never allow anything into your closet that is less than a FUKK YEAH! expression of who you really are." However, sadly, this sentiment ended in the introduction. The rest of the book insulted every type of person's style.
September 15, 2016
Bought this on a whim after hearing Wilson's interview on Marc Maron's "WTF" Podcast without looking into it anymore than that. I wish I did; the interview made this book out to be a comprehensive, big-picture perspective on fashion throughout the U.S. but unfortunately, it missed on almost every level. It reads more like a memoir than a legit perspective on American culture, and most points are blinded by her personal bias, voice, and over description (she often uses eight adjectives to describe a single noun). Not much to gain from reading it, but a decent amount of time to lose.
If you still want to read it, read the first chapter, two chapters in between, and the last. You'll have enough information to write an A+ book report on C+ book.
If you still want to read it, read the first chapter, two chapters in between, and the last. You'll have enough information to write an A+ book report on C+ book.
December 13, 2015
Really interesting one. It was an intriguing balance of pretension, self-awareness, and lack of self awareness that still worked. Sometimes it felt she was being particularly judgmental, but then another one of the inset photos of people of the street whose style she appreciated would bring home that the judgement fit in perfectly with her overall point that it wasn't the particulars of style that matters, but that you cultivate your own individual (rather than herd) style.
October 3, 2015
A razor sharp analysis of how various social strata and subcultures reveal their values and mores through clothing. Wilson is known for her wit, and doesn't disappoint, but this book also contains a heartfelt plea for the expression of individual style in the face of America's ubiquitous and homogenizing corporate monoculture.
April 30, 2016
There are few things I will post to facebook beyond self-promotional links to book reviews (such as this one) and photos of my dad, at his behest, when he comes to visit New York. Pictures from Egypt still haven’t made the cut, but The Propaganda of Pantone: Colour and Subcultural Sublimation did because I think it is way more interesting than me with a camel.
I read it before I picked up Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style and how much the article fascinated me may well be what—beyond the god-tier pun in the title—compelled me to pick up Fear & Loathing. I had a lot of fun with the book, though my experience with clothing is rather limited. Cintra Wilson is very funny and any subject matter she chooses to write about I will now seek out and consume.
That’s it. That’s my review. If you’re thinking about reading this book, go. Go, now, and do it. Yes, it suffers from the same sort of slowdown that any compilation of freestanding articles cobbled together into a semicohesive whole must overcome, but unless the word “sartorial” really, really bothers you, that isn’t much of a burden.
After reading the essay about the corporate co-opting of Seapunk and Vaporwave aesthetics—sartorial subcultures I didn’t even know existed before finding out they had been subsumed—were these lines:
Fashion is spinning its wheels, burdened by a self-referential paralysis like a later episode of Homestar Runner; all the weird new stuff relies on the consumer being familiar with what came before, and nobody has the time for sartorial history lessons anymore. Thus is born a pressure to constantly rehash and rebrand basic; the same A-line, flannel, or ringer tee.
Except Cintra Wilson. She remembers. And she tells you and you laugh and fashion seems fun again. At least for a few pages.
I read it before I picked up Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style and how much the article fascinated me may well be what—beyond the god-tier pun in the title—compelled me to pick up Fear & Loathing. I had a lot of fun with the book, though my experience with clothing is rather limited. Cintra Wilson is very funny and any subject matter she chooses to write about I will now seek out and consume.
That’s it. That’s my review. If you’re thinking about reading this book, go. Go, now, and do it. Yes, it suffers from the same sort of slowdown that any compilation of freestanding articles cobbled together into a semicohesive whole must overcome, but unless the word “sartorial” really, really bothers you, that isn’t much of a burden.
After reading the essay about the corporate co-opting of Seapunk and Vaporwave aesthetics—sartorial subcultures I didn’t even know existed before finding out they had been subsumed—were these lines:
“If you look at a [fashion magazine] spread from 1970, and then from 1980, there would be no way!” exhorted Mr. Steel. “They are universes apart. Completely different worlds!”That, right there; that very concept alone has done more to change the way I think about how I dress myself than anything else I have picked up.
So...what happened?
“I think there’s too many people invited to the party. Too many designers. Too much of everybody doing everything, bringing everything back, all the time.”
Fashion had frozen like a deer in the headlights—paralyzed by too much information.
There had been no big paradigm shift in fashion for the last twenty or more years because all the previous decades and their mutually exclusive style signatures were, now, all happening simultaneously.
Fashion is spinning its wheels, burdened by a self-referential paralysis like a later episode of Homestar Runner; all the weird new stuff relies on the consumer being familiar with what came before, and nobody has the time for sartorial history lessons anymore. Thus is born a pressure to constantly rehash and rebrand basic; the same A-line, flannel, or ringer tee.
Fashion, after all, like most businesses or media, is a hand-maiden of imperialism. Imperialism has always been given to the vanquishing and subsequent erasure of cultures; but it had been occurring to me more and more that one of the most insidious acts of symbolic violence is when marginalized and/or vanquished cultures (and/or subcultures) get trivialized, cutified, and converted into fashionable kitsch.You run out of stuff, so you convert tumblr to brand. You imply health through wardrobe with constant-casual athletic gear, spandex appropriate for any situation. You put bellbottoms and jean jackets and neon perms and ripped jeans and lilac hombre bobs together all at once, because everyone has access to everything and no one really remembers what looks good and what looks bad and what clothing is even supposed to do anymore, really.
Except Cintra Wilson. She remembers. And she tells you and you laugh and fashion seems fun again. At least for a few pages.
February 1, 2016
I am no fashionista, but I do love satirical movies/TV shows about the industry like "Qui Etes Vous Polly Magoo," "Absolutely Fabulous" and "Project Runway." After all, there is a lot to make fun of. It's a good thing I was not put off by the first chapter which sounded a little pretentious and overreaching even for someone like me who has an overall fondness for name-dropping snobs (me, I'm more of a music snob). For instance, Wilson describes Michelle Obama's inauguration dress as "a Narciso Rodriguez creation that was mind-bending - it evoked a French maid uniform covered with blood, which I took to be a coded fashion jab at the GOP." Really?
In spite of of these lapses, the rest of the book is funny as she tries to "deconstruct" everyday fashion and haute couture in various parts of the country. Of course it would be incomplete without a look at Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco. However, she also travels to Salt Lake City, the Iowa State Fair, Kansas and the Deep South; and not, as I expected, to entirely mock them. In homage to Hunter S. Thompson who obviously inspired the title of this work, she applies her powers of observation to the Kentucky Derby where "I am pretty sure I was the only person on the flight reading Marxist political philosophy by Slavoj Zizek." (I'm not sure if I am supposed to feel stupid for not having a clue who that is, but at least later, when she name-checks Huysmans' novel "A Rebours," I feel somewhat redeemed). One thing is clear: The Kentucky Derby is still decadent and depraved.
Actually Wilson, who writes mostly for the New York Times, comes from more of a lower-middle-class DIY Punk background, and is in in no way putting down those who cannot afford to spend $1,300 on a pair of jeans that are so "distressed" as to be unwashable. While it is not exactly a revelation that haute couture is frequently inspired by street fashions which originated as a form of rebellion (which is how Gucci now caters almost exclusively to the Hip Hop crowd); the problem with protest movements like Occupy Wall Street is the lack fashion sense that would make their message more powerful (to which I agree, and a better soundtrack would help as well).
All that aside, in a perverse way, I now want to visit some of the more outrageous SoHo and Madison Avenue boutiques to see some of the ridiculous creations that only Williamsburg Trustafarians or the "ladies who lunch" can afford. For instance, "a grey-on-grey bumble-bee-striped elastic bubble-shroud, which might have been ideal if you happened to be an eight-foot earthworm working the Soccer Yob of Turin look." Or how about a "stash bag" which is actually a "vicious looking rat-monster made of sable scraps," only $5,000. I admit, I want to see Carrie Bradshaw wannabees fighting over a $1,300 pair of shoes by Laboutin.
Another thing she points out is something that has been bugging me a long time; which is that there have been no era-defining looks since the 1990's. It turns out that most of the major designers have noticed this too and put it down to the simultaneous plundering of every decade's retro styles.
The advanced reading copy I am basing this review on has a few photos, but it needs many more to help me visualize some of the more laughable descriptions.
In spite of of these lapses, the rest of the book is funny as she tries to "deconstruct" everyday fashion and haute couture in various parts of the country. Of course it would be incomplete without a look at Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco. However, she also travels to Salt Lake City, the Iowa State Fair, Kansas and the Deep South; and not, as I expected, to entirely mock them. In homage to Hunter S. Thompson who obviously inspired the title of this work, she applies her powers of observation to the Kentucky Derby where "I am pretty sure I was the only person on the flight reading Marxist political philosophy by Slavoj Zizek." (I'm not sure if I am supposed to feel stupid for not having a clue who that is, but at least later, when she name-checks Huysmans' novel "A Rebours," I feel somewhat redeemed). One thing is clear: The Kentucky Derby is still decadent and depraved.
Actually Wilson, who writes mostly for the New York Times, comes from more of a lower-middle-class DIY Punk background, and is in in no way putting down those who cannot afford to spend $1,300 on a pair of jeans that are so "distressed" as to be unwashable. While it is not exactly a revelation that haute couture is frequently inspired by street fashions which originated as a form of rebellion (which is how Gucci now caters almost exclusively to the Hip Hop crowd); the problem with protest movements like Occupy Wall Street is the lack fashion sense that would make their message more powerful (to which I agree, and a better soundtrack would help as well).
All that aside, in a perverse way, I now want to visit some of the more outrageous SoHo and Madison Avenue boutiques to see some of the ridiculous creations that only Williamsburg Trustafarians or the "ladies who lunch" can afford. For instance, "a grey-on-grey bumble-bee-striped elastic bubble-shroud, which might have been ideal if you happened to be an eight-foot earthworm working the Soccer Yob of Turin look." Or how about a "stash bag" which is actually a "vicious looking rat-monster made of sable scraps," only $5,000. I admit, I want to see Carrie Bradshaw wannabees fighting over a $1,300 pair of shoes by Laboutin.
Another thing she points out is something that has been bugging me a long time; which is that there have been no era-defining looks since the 1990's. It turns out that most of the major designers have noticed this too and put it down to the simultaneous plundering of every decade's retro styles.
The advanced reading copy I am basing this review on has a few photos, but it needs many more to help me visualize some of the more laughable descriptions.
February 1, 2016
Often trying too hard.
July 5, 2023
I read this one as an assignment for a fashion history class in undergrad, and I was super excited about it when it was assigned. However, the content is rather sneering on anyone who is below a certain class (namely anyone who is different from the author), makes fun of rural Americans’ politics and faith, and assumes that the author knows best what exactly everyone should be thinking. Didn’t enjoy at all.
Particularly annoying was a portion of the book that focused on criticizing Sarah Palin because she had been at the same fair the author had gone to on the same day. Puzzling, and also annoying because although everyone has an opinion on Sarah Palin, she still is an important figure in political history and was the first Republican woman to make it onto a presidential ticket. 🤷🏻♀️ also, if you’re in rural Iowa, you will probably run into many people who won’t share the values of a fashion critic from New York. Was that so surprising to the author that she had to devote pages to her surprise/disgust?
Maybe I’m just a person who’d like to read fashion books without political theory and snobbery, but who knows? Maybe I’m not the only one who’d prefer a separation between the two.
Particularly annoying was a portion of the book that focused on criticizing Sarah Palin because she had been at the same fair the author had gone to on the same day. Puzzling, and also annoying because although everyone has an opinion on Sarah Palin, she still is an important figure in political history and was the first Republican woman to make it onto a presidential ticket. 🤷🏻♀️ also, if you’re in rural Iowa, you will probably run into many people who won’t share the values of a fashion critic from New York. Was that so surprising to the author that she had to devote pages to her surprise/disgust?
Maybe I’m just a person who’d like to read fashion books without political theory and snobbery, but who knows? Maybe I’m not the only one who’d prefer a separation between the two.
May 27, 2020
So many of the descriptions in this KILLED me (the vintage store in LA especially, oh my god), and all the styles are so well-observed. I kept worrying that it would veer into that awful I’m In Love With How Clever I Am territory, but thankfully it never did. It’s pretty anecdotal and she sure likes to split an infinitive, but overall a fun read that highlighted a lot of things I’d found myself noticing too.
May 6, 2021
Cintra Wilson is like the Anthony Bourdain of style. Like Bourdain, Wilson comes at her subjects with beginner's mind and a punky iconoclasm that render her observations equally humane and sardonic. She's a master of metaphor, simile, and allusion, which is why you may want to keep a highlighter pen handy like I did. The pieces occasionally lack cohesion as a book, and seem more like a collection of her articles than a single treatise, but her humor and dives into philosophy dazzle and shock the brain into seeing clothing as complex symbols hiding in plain sight.
November 10, 2015
Overall a disappointing book. The premise presented was "what people from different areas dress like, and what this says about them", but it should have been along the lines of "here's a list of people I hate, and some of the things they sometimes wear".
Wilson's chapter-long rant about Mormons and Mormonism is riddled with the fact that she very obviously knows and understands little about them. But of course, that didn't stop her from spending all that time hating them.
At one point, she complains about people being offended by some definitely offensive things she said- it was all very classist and fatphobic- and she moans, bitches, and complains about how they thought she was just some skinny bitch with a silver spoon shoved up her ass, when she WASN'T born with significant means, and that means she's Totally Not Classist, you guys!!1! Someone ought to explain to her that you can be classist, even if you're born sans silver spoon. It is, indeed, possible. Also, she much never wrote anything about fat people that wasn't disgustingly voyeuristic or shaming. But she's Totally Not Fatphobic, you guys!!1!
Also, gay men obviously mean nothing to her. There's a moment where she is writing about social interactions in Miami when she says, (paraphrased from memory) "women and men don't talk to each other-- men talk to other men, and women talk to other women, and their gay male friends". So you know, gay men aren't men. Of course. She also describes gay men as accessories to affluent straight women, which is disgusting.
And someone really, really needs to tell her that 'schizophrenic' and 'bipolar' aren't adjectives to spice up a boring sentence. They're mental illnesses labels that should only ever be used as such.
And jesus, if you're going to write a fashion book, write it. Don't waste my time.
Wilson's chapter-long rant about Mormons and Mormonism is riddled with the fact that she very obviously knows and understands little about them. But of course, that didn't stop her from spending all that time hating them.
At one point, she complains about people being offended by some definitely offensive things she said- it was all very classist and fatphobic- and she moans, bitches, and complains about how they thought she was just some skinny bitch with a silver spoon shoved up her ass, when she WASN'T born with significant means, and that means she's Totally Not Classist, you guys!!1! Someone ought to explain to her that you can be classist, even if you're born sans silver spoon. It is, indeed, possible. Also, she much never wrote anything about fat people that wasn't disgustingly voyeuristic or shaming. But she's Totally Not Fatphobic, you guys!!1!
Also, gay men obviously mean nothing to her. There's a moment where she is writing about social interactions in Miami when she says, (paraphrased from memory) "women and men don't talk to each other-- men talk to other men, and women talk to other women, and their gay male friends". So you know, gay men aren't men. Of course. She also describes gay men as accessories to affluent straight women, which is disgusting.
And someone really, really needs to tell her that 'schizophrenic' and 'bipolar' aren't adjectives to spice up a boring sentence. They're mental illnesses labels that should only ever be used as such.
And jesus, if you're going to write a fashion book, write it. Don't waste my time.
March 19, 2016
Oh dear, I let my excitement get the better of me and read the whole book hoping it would meet those expectations. In the beginning Wilson includes excerpts from pieces she's written for the New York Times and I loved the way she described a single garment so beautifully. Unfortunately, the editing and printing errors were too distracting. The same word was often printed twice twice, and there was a random "T" in the margin of one page that I could not get over. It also drove me nuts that she's writing about fashion, chooses to include pictures, but does not shell out the money for color photos! And she chooses to take pictures of some pretty boring outfits too. This book is so heavy but where are the glossies?? She loves a run-on sentence and to pack as many dizzying words into one page as she can.
Why didn't I give the book 1 star? I commend her liberal, feminist voice and she's very pro-whatever you want to wear!
Why didn't I give the book 1 star? I commend her liberal, feminist voice and she's very pro-whatever you want to wear!
August 21, 2016
I heard Cintra on WTF podcast and really enjoyed her. I am also super interested in the "whys" of style and fashion (eg why were shoulder pads in the 80s so prevalent? Was it so women seemed more masculine at work?) so I was really excited to read this one. While fun to read, I was disappointed as I was expecting more of a Mary Roach like approach. Instead it's Cintra's observations and musings, which is not bed, but not what I was looking for. That being said, the chapter comparing the very rich and very poor in NYC and how the basically have the same taste was brilliant.
April 27, 2016
I liked this a lot. She is very funny and smart. I didn't realize she wrote about fashion for the New York Times. It's awesome because she isn't a fashion professional of any kind she's just an extremely observant and very funny journalist who writes really well. Pretty much the best person to write about fashion IMHO. The photos aren't great and I wished they'd some drawings instead which would have been more effective to explain features of regional style.
May 20, 2016
The premise: To observe fashion in various regions of the US and determine what these sartorial choices reveal about about the people there. Unfortunately, the author does not deliver. Instead she observes how people from different areas dress, and by way of her judgmental and subjective criticism reveals what she thinks of herself. If reading a 300 page op-ed is of interest to you, you’ll love this book. Otherwise, read something by Valerie Steele.
July 14, 2016
I'm afraid I agree with the "written by a hater" reviews. Cintra is an amazing writer,so the book gets two stars. She has the ability to make you laugh out loud. Unfortunately she is also unkind, snarky, and verbally vial to anyone who happens to hold a different point of view than she does. And God forbid you don't agree with her political views....you are a devil from hell that must be verbally eviscerated....in a book about fashion. Go figure. A great idea gone vindictive.
September 21, 2015
Fashion in terms of political-economy, sociology, geography. Very clever book. I recommend not reading the chapters in order and going for whichever area of the country you have a particular interest. I thought the Hi/Low NYC, DC, Kentucky, Iowa and Kansas chapters were the best. Coulda been a bit more "gonzo" but there was definitely a touch there.
October 29, 2015
Sometimes I loved it so hard.
November 21, 2015
Read the last two chapters for some ruthless Truth. Read all but the last two chapters for some clever, laugh producing jabs.
May 16, 2016
Funny, intelligent, and an all-around VERY enjoyable read! Highly recommend.
November 4, 2015
Long review--potentially my longest ever. Tl; dr: Stop what you're doing NOW and buy this book.
There have been three moments in my life where a discovery of a book was the equivalent of stumbling upon alien treasure. When I die, I can see these three moments as being part of the film reel that will flash before me. The first time was when I accidentally took the wrong book on a road trip at the tender age of eight. Bette Davis's This 'n' That has the same look and dimension of a Lois Duncan horror paperback (and to this day no one knows how the hell that book wound up in our house), and so I found myself with the wrong book on a long ass car ride to my grandmother's. I knew absolutely nothing about Ms. Davis and could care less, but read it anyways out of boredom. Somewhere in the 7 hour car ride to the Smoky Mountains to my formidable grandmother's house, I became obsessed.
When I was bad, the surrender of that book was the punishment held over my head. The sad thing, is that the book is not that great. It's a sad rehash of Davis's glory days but there's still a defiant and furious vindication of her life intermingled with bitching about TV dinners. There are far better books on Bette Davis and better books in general x 10th degree, but none changed my life as much as that flimsy shitty paperback. A few months after reading it and becoming #1 fan, I saw on TV one morning that she had passed away. Inconsolable.
Fast forward a few years to 12, where I was hanging out at the town library in TN as usual, probably busy in maintaining my record as most books read for children contest (I was privately mega competitive about it--probably none of the others in contention cared). At that time, the room I would hang out to read was festooned with animal heads, rhinos, endangered animals galore, gifted to the library by some great white hunter sixty years before. I'd sit under their glass eyes, mildly creeped out and angry at their pointless deaths. The child librarian showed me the "special closet" filled with stuffed baby seals, that were put out of sight because it upset too many people. (Years later, when the new library was built, the rhino and ibex heads were sold, and I heard the baby seals tossed out with the garbage because no one wanted to buy them. Ugh.) Anyways, one day amongst the unfortunate megafauna I stumbled across Mabel: Hollywood's First I Don't Care Girl by Betty Fussell, which had the result to further my old movie star craze to the realm of silents. Mabel is potentially a flawed biography (that's its strength), but I still consider it one of the greatest because it acknowledges its bias in a very meta way. Not that I've had the opportunity, but I'd probably stab anyone who dared talk shit about Mabel Normand (not that I carry a knife or have ever met anyone with a strong opinion about her pro or con).
The third great moment in literature for me was nine years later--I was at Smith College and had managed to sneakily hook myself a cushy job as film librarian at the college library (and because I am poor, supplemented with washing dishes, working at another library, and waiting tables at the fancy hotel in town). Setting out the new books, I saw Massive Swelling by Cintra Wilson, said to myself "Huh, this looks interesting." Since then, I've probably bought 20 copies of that book at least--it's my perennial Christmas gift to people. If I had a disposable income, I'd be like the Gideons and quietly place it in hotel rooms and movie theaters.
Of all the living writers out there, Cintra Wilson to me is the apogee. I eagerly await all her books (sadly few, but I don't begrudge the fact she's not as prolific as I like--true genius isn't recognized until later and she doesn't just vomit out prose--you can tell the work behind it). Granted I'm a huge Dorothy Parker fan (wrote my thesis on her) and collect various editions of her works, and I know the Parker comparison has been used with Wilson, which alone shows her greatness. If I had a time machine, besides going back in time to see Judy at Carnegie Hall or a Sarah Bernhardt opening night, I'd forcibly put Dorothy & Cintra in a room together. They have a lot in common--Parker's theater & book reviews are eerily similar to Wilson, and much like how Parker was raked over the coals for her review of a Billie Burke play, Wilson had to deal with the same stupid controvery for the JC Pennygate.
That was the one part of this book I had an issue with--Cintra Wilson was apologetic over the whole affair (much like Dorothy was). Both are critics, both are not soft with their punches, and who really wants a milquetoast critic? I sure as hell don't. If anything, both are harder on themselves than anyone else. Cintra Wilson has inherited that Eye of Sauron. And based on some negative reviews and stupid "controversy"--it's obvious people are cherrypicking sections and not reading beyond paragraphs (aka the DC chapter). If anything, both Wilson & Parker are harder on themselves than anyone they review. The ironic part is beyond critics of their time, it's CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. If looking at yourself and trying to analyze at a distance causes you to knee jerk flail, then it's you.
When did Americans lose our sense of humor? It's like our one reliable export people!
For those who are still with me in this review, Fear and Clothing is about FASHION, but only tangentially. Fashion is a mix of symbology, politics, national identity, history, societal/gender/regional norms. Who knew?
To be honest, I do not give one whit about fashion. I own one pair of shoes and my entire closet could spontaneously combust and I would not care one bit (except that I despise shopping, so would be a pain to reaquire solid color shirts and khakis that I routinely wear and do not give one iota about). Whatever free money I have, I spend on bills and the things I actually have passion for: books, old movie star paraphenalia, alcohol, fancy keyboards (haha, Wilson even namechecks WoW--I'm sure she doesn't play WoW, but if she did, OMG!). This book actually made me reevaluate my choices in this regard and made me think more deeper on fashion choices--obviously I should care and what does it say about me that I don't at all? But beyond fashion itself, like Wilson's Caligula: Better Living Through Tyranny--it makes you want to whet your pitchfork and hunt up a torch to take to the streets.
I think part of why I consider her our best author is her prose. You could take any line of her book in random and you would immediately recognize her voice. How many authors can you do that with? Very few. Picking up the book by me, flipping at a random page, here's this gem for you all: "Then I realized they probably were really designed for...I can't remember what, because when I got home, I snorted Clorox and bleached the thought right out of my mind." Even if you are one of the targets she skewers, I don't understand how one cannot validate the awesomeness of her prose. Last Friday, I breezed through a 700 page thriller, today reading this book (that I've been eagerly anticipating and cursing myself for not paying for faster shipping), the same amount of time, I was only 150 pages in.
And it's not that it's a hard book to get through. People at work tonight must have thought I was mental, quietly snorting to myself, getting out a pen to underline and make margin notes (and Wilson is an author you want to underline, highlight, and make marginalia a la Louise Brooks), and then I was finally cut free to race home and continue reading where I could laugh at loud. However, with all the snark and humor, it's not free floating scum or bubbles, she makes you THINK. Which is probably why people are threatened or why she's not a bigger name like she should be.
In essence, this book is Wilson being tossed into the realm of fashion, which she herself admits she had no real knowledge about but gamely took it up anyways. And like her other books on celebrity & politics (her fiction Colors Insulting to Nature also GREAT), everything is intertwined. The book itself is a self journey--which makes the outrage even more stupid since she's harder on herself than anyone else. Are we reduced to stupid Yahoo! news comments? Or can we think of matters more critically, even if it's about dresses and pumps? Cintra! Never apologize! Ever!
The section on the South I found the most interesting, since I am firmly in the clasp of the Bible Belt. I've heard of the MRS degree, but I think where she was led astray is that the MRS. folks are firmly in the upperclass. As she notes in her section on NYC, the 1% and those on the fringes have eery similarities. So while yes, there is the MRS. thing, the Kentucky Derby hatted women with pastel red faced escorts, the cotillions, and debutantes, that's not something most southern women can identify with. I think majority of us have not married our high school sweethearts and not been ostracized (but what do I know? I spent my formative years at the library or at work).
Yet...when I got to that chapter, I had a recent flashback. When I was unemployed recently, I had a temporary job of organizing a CEO's files. Basically 10 minutes into walking his house (swanky, he had me first take his Lexus to the shop to get fixed), I went "Oh hell" to myself upon return. Wilson in this book talks about how you can tell a host from their bookshelf, and yep. You can tell from mine and looking at my temp employer's books--Songs of the South, golf manuals, multiple editions of Mein Kampf (why does a normal person need 6 copies of THAT?)--basically every book on shelf = "Uh oh"; the Nathaniel Bedford Forrest bust; the odd and totally inappropriate Norman Rockwellish portrait of a starving Ethiopian child, admist Confederate regalia mixed with "SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN", all added up to bad. Everywhere I looked was red flag. While I was rearranging his crappy files, he asked me if I was married. To the answer of "nope," I got back "That must be so hard. How do you get by without a man to take care of you?" Even grossly repugnant, he genuinely was concerned and confused. I had no answer really. I've never had that response before. It was so outside my experience, he could have asked me why I didn't subsist on mice like boa constrictors. Whenever I've been buried under Southern angst, my answer has been "Bah! Tallu! Tallu!"
I left that day, after agreeing to take paychecks to his workers (mostly illegal from Guatemala, heard many racist epithets about) and never came back). And no huge suprise that that guy and family are involved in KKK. I've had lulz recently reading how Annonymous can't reveal 1,000 KKK members because not that many. The reason this review is so long is because reading this book on FASHION brought up all these memories of "Ugh. She's right. We need to riot!" However, with all this, I think Cintra hasn't spent enough time in the South. The Southern part of book is centered around Alabama, and somewhat short shift--Alabama's two greatest daughters are Tallulah Bankhead and Zelda Fitzgerald and I can't think of two less cotillion playmates than those two or I guess more fun people to be at a debutante ball with.
Though women that break through of the Southern bonds (and she hints at this with her Scarlett O'Hara quotes), the bonds self shackle. Which is sort of the pont of this book--again the "controversy" is stupid, because Wilson has the most praise and plaudits to the midwest and yeah, even the South. She's hardest on New York, which is part of why I'm anti-fashion. It's so expensive, it's prohibitive. Fashion, much like the world now, is antithetical to the middle class, which is part of Wilson's screed. This review makes it seem humorless and HL Menkenish--but there's a lot of joy & self discovery.
And it's why I savor her books and re-read them over and over. Makes you think. And the mentions of Marie Antoinette with the hats at the Kentucky Derby or Marie pretending to be a shepherd... Well I've been reading a lot on French Revolution lately. Thought it was funny the book on Robespierre recently the amount of reviews of "Author pro-Robespierre!" when I read the same damn book and came out with "Robespierre = evil/manipulative son of a bitch!" with zero other interpretation to book. Not that in my recent reading on The Terror I had much sympathy with Marie or Louis, they dug their own graves, and stupidly took too many picnics in their escape (I feel bad for their kids and the countless that fell in the Vendee and before the guillotine).
As a classics major, yeah. Probably why these books speak to me. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of Empire...are we there? Cintra asks the question and it's a valid one that I don't see anyone else asking. Fashion hasn't moved in 20 years, just become more of a money based, both high and low. And in the middle, we deal and make our own style.
I mean come on: "Cinderella myths crash hard, and I've seen the burning pumpkins next to the freeway. Lost glass slippers sometimes still contain a human foot"
Great book, lots to think about, please read. If anything to take from this rambling awful review is experiment, laugh, embark on new journeys like Cintra Wilson would. There are so many things I wish she'd write on. The ENTIRE book, I thought of Kay Francis. Kay Francis kept coming to my mind in this book since I recently read her diaries--basically she parlayed a nice black dress to success, so it applies, since that's Cintra's theme, but the life of Kay Francis is a very interesting one in lots of ways--plenty of themes to riff with. I know Cintra Wilson doesn't do historical fiction because like Parker there's plenty of current affairs to keep her busy, but if anyone could do a novel or biography on Kay Francis....
Anyway, this whole book, I was angry at myself, America, the world, and thought thought thought about important issues & Kay Francis. Buy this book folks! You won't regret!
There have been three moments in my life where a discovery of a book was the equivalent of stumbling upon alien treasure. When I die, I can see these three moments as being part of the film reel that will flash before me. The first time was when I accidentally took the wrong book on a road trip at the tender age of eight. Bette Davis's This 'n' That has the same look and dimension of a Lois Duncan horror paperback (and to this day no one knows how the hell that book wound up in our house), and so I found myself with the wrong book on a long ass car ride to my grandmother's. I knew absolutely nothing about Ms. Davis and could care less, but read it anyways out of boredom. Somewhere in the 7 hour car ride to the Smoky Mountains to my formidable grandmother's house, I became obsessed.
When I was bad, the surrender of that book was the punishment held over my head. The sad thing, is that the book is not that great. It's a sad rehash of Davis's glory days but there's still a defiant and furious vindication of her life intermingled with bitching about TV dinners. There are far better books on Bette Davis and better books in general x 10th degree, but none changed my life as much as that flimsy shitty paperback. A few months after reading it and becoming #1 fan, I saw on TV one morning that she had passed away. Inconsolable.
Fast forward a few years to 12, where I was hanging out at the town library in TN as usual, probably busy in maintaining my record as most books read for children contest (I was privately mega competitive about it--probably none of the others in contention cared). At that time, the room I would hang out to read was festooned with animal heads, rhinos, endangered animals galore, gifted to the library by some great white hunter sixty years before. I'd sit under their glass eyes, mildly creeped out and angry at their pointless deaths. The child librarian showed me the "special closet" filled with stuffed baby seals, that were put out of sight because it upset too many people. (Years later, when the new library was built, the rhino and ibex heads were sold, and I heard the baby seals tossed out with the garbage because no one wanted to buy them. Ugh.) Anyways, one day amongst the unfortunate megafauna I stumbled across Mabel: Hollywood's First I Don't Care Girl by Betty Fussell, which had the result to further my old movie star craze to the realm of silents. Mabel is potentially a flawed biography (that's its strength), but I still consider it one of the greatest because it acknowledges its bias in a very meta way. Not that I've had the opportunity, but I'd probably stab anyone who dared talk shit about Mabel Normand (not that I carry a knife or have ever met anyone with a strong opinion about her pro or con).
The third great moment in literature for me was nine years later--I was at Smith College and had managed to sneakily hook myself a cushy job as film librarian at the college library (and because I am poor, supplemented with washing dishes, working at another library, and waiting tables at the fancy hotel in town). Setting out the new books, I saw Massive Swelling by Cintra Wilson, said to myself "Huh, this looks interesting." Since then, I've probably bought 20 copies of that book at least--it's my perennial Christmas gift to people. If I had a disposable income, I'd be like the Gideons and quietly place it in hotel rooms and movie theaters.
Of all the living writers out there, Cintra Wilson to me is the apogee. I eagerly await all her books (sadly few, but I don't begrudge the fact she's not as prolific as I like--true genius isn't recognized until later and she doesn't just vomit out prose--you can tell the work behind it). Granted I'm a huge Dorothy Parker fan (wrote my thesis on her) and collect various editions of her works, and I know the Parker comparison has been used with Wilson, which alone shows her greatness. If I had a time machine, besides going back in time to see Judy at Carnegie Hall or a Sarah Bernhardt opening night, I'd forcibly put Dorothy & Cintra in a room together. They have a lot in common--Parker's theater & book reviews are eerily similar to Wilson, and much like how Parker was raked over the coals for her review of a Billie Burke play, Wilson had to deal with the same stupid controvery for the JC Pennygate.
That was the one part of this book I had an issue with--Cintra Wilson was apologetic over the whole affair (much like Dorothy was). Both are critics, both are not soft with their punches, and who really wants a milquetoast critic? I sure as hell don't. If anything, both are harder on themselves than anyone else. Cintra Wilson has inherited that Eye of Sauron. And based on some negative reviews and stupid "controversy"--it's obvious people are cherrypicking sections and not reading beyond paragraphs (aka the DC chapter). If anything, both Wilson & Parker are harder on themselves than anyone they review. The ironic part is beyond critics of their time, it's CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. If looking at yourself and trying to analyze at a distance causes you to knee jerk flail, then it's you.
When did Americans lose our sense of humor? It's like our one reliable export people!
For those who are still with me in this review, Fear and Clothing is about FASHION, but only tangentially. Fashion is a mix of symbology, politics, national identity, history, societal/gender/regional norms. Who knew?
To be honest, I do not give one whit about fashion. I own one pair of shoes and my entire closet could spontaneously combust and I would not care one bit (except that I despise shopping, so would be a pain to reaquire solid color shirts and khakis that I routinely wear and do not give one iota about). Whatever free money I have, I spend on bills and the things I actually have passion for: books, old movie star paraphenalia, alcohol, fancy keyboards (haha, Wilson even namechecks WoW--I'm sure she doesn't play WoW, but if she did, OMG!). This book actually made me reevaluate my choices in this regard and made me think more deeper on fashion choices--obviously I should care and what does it say about me that I don't at all? But beyond fashion itself, like Wilson's Caligula: Better Living Through Tyranny--it makes you want to whet your pitchfork and hunt up a torch to take to the streets.
I think part of why I consider her our best author is her prose. You could take any line of her book in random and you would immediately recognize her voice. How many authors can you do that with? Very few. Picking up the book by me, flipping at a random page, here's this gem for you all: "Then I realized they probably were really designed for...I can't remember what, because when I got home, I snorted Clorox and bleached the thought right out of my mind." Even if you are one of the targets she skewers, I don't understand how one cannot validate the awesomeness of her prose. Last Friday, I breezed through a 700 page thriller, today reading this book (that I've been eagerly anticipating and cursing myself for not paying for faster shipping), the same amount of time, I was only 150 pages in.
And it's not that it's a hard book to get through. People at work tonight must have thought I was mental, quietly snorting to myself, getting out a pen to underline and make margin notes (and Wilson is an author you want to underline, highlight, and make marginalia a la Louise Brooks), and then I was finally cut free to race home and continue reading where I could laugh at loud. However, with all the snark and humor, it's not free floating scum or bubbles, she makes you THINK. Which is probably why people are threatened or why she's not a bigger name like she should be.
In essence, this book is Wilson being tossed into the realm of fashion, which she herself admits she had no real knowledge about but gamely took it up anyways. And like her other books on celebrity & politics (her fiction Colors Insulting to Nature also GREAT), everything is intertwined. The book itself is a self journey--which makes the outrage even more stupid since she's harder on herself than anyone else. Are we reduced to stupid Yahoo! news comments? Or can we think of matters more critically, even if it's about dresses and pumps? Cintra! Never apologize! Ever!
The section on the South I found the most interesting, since I am firmly in the clasp of the Bible Belt. I've heard of the MRS degree, but I think where she was led astray is that the MRS. folks are firmly in the upperclass. As she notes in her section on NYC, the 1% and those on the fringes have eery similarities. So while yes, there is the MRS. thing, the Kentucky Derby hatted women with pastel red faced escorts, the cotillions, and debutantes, that's not something most southern women can identify with. I think majority of us have not married our high school sweethearts and not been ostracized (but what do I know? I spent my formative years at the library or at work).
Yet...when I got to that chapter, I had a recent flashback. When I was unemployed recently, I had a temporary job of organizing a CEO's files. Basically 10 minutes into walking his house (swanky, he had me first take his Lexus to the shop to get fixed), I went "Oh hell" to myself upon return. Wilson in this book talks about how you can tell a host from their bookshelf, and yep. You can tell from mine and looking at my temp employer's books--Songs of the South, golf manuals, multiple editions of Mein Kampf (why does a normal person need 6 copies of THAT?)--basically every book on shelf = "Uh oh"; the Nathaniel Bedford Forrest bust; the odd and totally inappropriate Norman Rockwellish portrait of a starving Ethiopian child, admist Confederate regalia mixed with "SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN", all added up to bad. Everywhere I looked was red flag. While I was rearranging his crappy files, he asked me if I was married. To the answer of "nope," I got back "That must be so hard. How do you get by without a man to take care of you?" Even grossly repugnant, he genuinely was concerned and confused. I had no answer really. I've never had that response before. It was so outside my experience, he could have asked me why I didn't subsist on mice like boa constrictors. Whenever I've been buried under Southern angst, my answer has been "Bah! Tallu! Tallu!"
I left that day, after agreeing to take paychecks to his workers (mostly illegal from Guatemala, heard many racist epithets about) and never came back). And no huge suprise that that guy and family are involved in KKK. I've had lulz recently reading how Annonymous can't reveal 1,000 KKK members because not that many. The reason this review is so long is because reading this book on FASHION brought up all these memories of "Ugh. She's right. We need to riot!" However, with all this, I think Cintra hasn't spent enough time in the South. The Southern part of book is centered around Alabama, and somewhat short shift--Alabama's two greatest daughters are Tallulah Bankhead and Zelda Fitzgerald and I can't think of two less cotillion playmates than those two or I guess more fun people to be at a debutante ball with.
Though women that break through of the Southern bonds (and she hints at this with her Scarlett O'Hara quotes), the bonds self shackle. Which is sort of the pont of this book--again the "controversy" is stupid, because Wilson has the most praise and plaudits to the midwest and yeah, even the South. She's hardest on New York, which is part of why I'm anti-fashion. It's so expensive, it's prohibitive. Fashion, much like the world now, is antithetical to the middle class, which is part of Wilson's screed. This review makes it seem humorless and HL Menkenish--but there's a lot of joy & self discovery.
And it's why I savor her books and re-read them over and over. Makes you think. And the mentions of Marie Antoinette with the hats at the Kentucky Derby or Marie pretending to be a shepherd... Well I've been reading a lot on French Revolution lately. Thought it was funny the book on Robespierre recently the amount of reviews of "Author pro-Robespierre!" when I read the same damn book and came out with "Robespierre = evil/manipulative son of a bitch!" with zero other interpretation to book. Not that in my recent reading on The Terror I had much sympathy with Marie or Louis, they dug their own graves, and stupidly took too many picnics in their escape (I feel bad for their kids and the countless that fell in the Vendee and before the guillotine).
As a classics major, yeah. Probably why these books speak to me. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of Empire...are we there? Cintra asks the question and it's a valid one that I don't see anyone else asking. Fashion hasn't moved in 20 years, just become more of a money based, both high and low. And in the middle, we deal and make our own style.
I mean come on: "Cinderella myths crash hard, and I've seen the burning pumpkins next to the freeway. Lost glass slippers sometimes still contain a human foot"
Great book, lots to think about, please read. If anything to take from this rambling awful review is experiment, laugh, embark on new journeys like Cintra Wilson would. There are so many things I wish she'd write on. The ENTIRE book, I thought of Kay Francis. Kay Francis kept coming to my mind in this book since I recently read her diaries--basically she parlayed a nice black dress to success, so it applies, since that's Cintra's theme, but the life of Kay Francis is a very interesting one in lots of ways--plenty of themes to riff with. I know Cintra Wilson doesn't do historical fiction because like Parker there's plenty of current affairs to keep her busy, but if anyone could do a novel or biography on Kay Francis....
Anyway, this whole book, I was angry at myself, America, the world, and thought thought thought about important issues & Kay Francis. Buy this book folks! You won't regret!
July 20, 2020
Despite a few missteps, this collection of essays about the style to be seen in various parts of America by an ex-punk anarchist fashionista was a laugh riot. Wilson's acerbic wit is at its best when it's celebrating the styles of Wyoming cowboys, Southern belles, and South Beach beauty bodies; less interesting were her more academic forays into spectacle and capitalism (gotta prove she's still a Gramsci-reading punk, I guess) and the essays that were obviously culled from her former New York Times fashion column, including a nasty one about the opening of a JC Penney. (In her defense, she at least apologizes and backsteps from this horrendous column, where her snark ended up unintentionally making fun of fat people instead of the corporate overlords of JC Penney.)
October 13, 2018
"[L]ife is too short to wear disguises that hide you from the world, because these choices can end up hiding you from yourself. If the phenomenon of RuPaul has proven anything, it is that your true beauty is found by boldly striding down the most daring personal catwalk that you allow yourself to explore."
"Whatever it is: if you feel sharp in it, it can't be wrong. Nothing you put on your body that makes you feel like your most radiant and indestructible self can be considered a fashion mistake. Don't let life pass you by without wearing something foolish . . . and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."
"Whatever it is: if you feel sharp in it, it can't be wrong. Nothing you put on your body that makes you feel like your most radiant and indestructible self can be considered a fashion mistake. Don't let life pass you by without wearing something foolish . . . and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."
July 6, 2020
This book is was a gift from a kind neighbor and I began it with a high degree of skepticism. I actually enjoyed the author’s Gonzo journalistic style and sharp wit in merging social commentary with fashion design. This isn’t a subject I would ever out unless in said circumstances.
As the culture critic for the NY Times Cintra Wilson has had a very wide field of play. Cintra also covered politics and the pentagon in past assignments, so she brings a broadly informed perspective to her writing. She seems very invested in carrying on the Gonzo journalistic tradition of Hunter S. Thompson, but if not intended it is an odd synchronicity.
As the culture critic for the NY Times Cintra Wilson has had a very wide field of play. Cintra also covered politics and the pentagon in past assignments, so she brings a broadly informed perspective to her writing. She seems very invested in carrying on the Gonzo journalistic tradition of Hunter S. Thompson, but if not intended it is an odd synchronicity.
December 30, 2022
This book is edgy—sometimes a bit too much so—but I like the overall punk approach to fashion across America, described with psychological insight and humor (and with the occasional misstep, but that is going to happen when boundaries are being pushed). I read this at the end of 2022, and although many of the observations are fairly timeless, some of the current events and assumed sensibilities were already feeling a bit dated (remember Occupy Wall Street?). However, overall, I was quite entertained. The last chapter, "To Thine Own Style Be True," is worth reading multiple times.
July 3, 2017
Wilson is very blunt, not particularly insightful about the semantics of clothes (susceptible to cliche, dismissive of difference, and uninterested in questioning her own immediate impressions) and way too fond of her own "clever" turns of phrase and metaphors but she's kind of a lovable dork, and I really appreciated that her choices about where to visit for this book ranged pretty widely. She's one of the least subtle writers I've ever encountered but she can be pretty funny.
December 25, 2018
I am clearly not the demographic for this book. Many of her fashion and style references left me in the dark, reducing my reading enjoyment. That said, I kept reading because it was reasonably well-written and made interesting connections between clothing and social trends, self-perception, and politics. I do wish the collection would have hung together a little better...they read as individual essays, not as a coherent whole.
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