Nothing in Itself

The author suggests that fashion today has anticipated and redefined, in the dazzle on the runway, or even in the ready-to-wear, the terms in which it is critiqued, while sometimes giving the impression that it is inseparable from critique. There is little to be said of fashion that is not somehow visible in fashion. The book looks at clothes with a fastidious eye to style, new looks, and old looks. Meanwhile, if the theatricality of fashion is belabored in cultural studies, there are other issues - recurring in history and, like the rise and fall of the hemline, approaching the metaphysical - that come with dress in its fascination-effect. As Blau sees it, this will inevitably return us to the validities, artful vanities, and deceits of appearance. No more than appearance, "nothing in itself," that fashion has substance, complex and elusive substance, is the thematic of this book, which puts another complexion on the subject, the look, and the look that incites the look, in high style, street style, classical elegance or fetishistic chic, from farthingale and corset to drop-dead glamour, power suits, waifishness, and grunge.