Art historian Hollander tries to set the record straight about the ``tyranny'' of fashion and to clear its bad name, making a reasonably strong case but offering a surprisingly lifeless account in the process. Hollander (Moving Pictures, 1989, etc.) spends most of the book establishing modern masculine sartorial superiority, setting up the contrast between the men's suit, with its brilliant design- -serious, sexy, timeless—and what, until this century, was mere ephemeral female fashion frippery. From the 1600s until the early 1900s, women's dress became increasingly theatrical and decorative, and received more attention from society (i.e., men), while men's dress set the classical standard. Obscuring female form and motion with tiny waists and voluminous skirts, women's clothing earned fashion the reputation of being manipulative and deceptive. Hollander asserts, to the contrary, that fashion is an ``imaginative art.'' Only in the early 20th century, however, did women's fashion become realistic and dignified. The introduction of short skirts after WW I gave coherence to the female form (and made exposing legs, and thus the wearing of pants, possible). It is just recently, Hollander argues, that female dress has begun to set any significant standards for Western fashion: ``Women finally took over the total male scheme of dress, modified it to suit themselves, and have handed it back to men charged with immense new possiblities.'' Sex and Suits has several major weaknesses, however. Most frustrating, given the book's historical scope (from the Greeks to the Gap), is the profusion of generalizations (``In general, people have always worn what they wanted to wear; fashion exists to keep fulfilling that desire'') and occasional preposterous pronouncements resulting from her attempt to divorce shifts in fashion from social forces. Also, her take on the relationship between gender and contemporary fashion is dated. Still, despite its un-hip feel, a coherent defense of fashion's integrity. (45 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 9, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43096-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
James Baldwin has come a long way since the days of Notes of a Native Son, when, in 1955, he wrote: "I love America more than any other country in the world; and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." Such bittersweet affairs are bound to turn sour. The first curdling came with The Fire Next Time, a moving memoir, yet shot through with rage and prophetic denunciations. It made Baldwin famous, indeed a celebrity, but it did little, in retrospect, to further his artistic reputation. Increasingly, it seems, he found it impossible to reconcile his private and public roles, his creative integrity and his position as spokesman for his race. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, for example, his last novel, proved to be little more than a propagandistic potboiler. Nor, alas, are things very much better in No Name In the Street, a brief, rather touchy and self-regarding survey of the awful events of the '60's — the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the difficulties of the Black Panther Party, the abrasive and confused relationships between liberals and militants. True, Baldwin's old verve and Biblical raciness are once more heard in his voice; true, there are poignant moments and some surprisingly intimate details. But this chronicle of his "painful route back to engagement" never really comes to grips with history or the self. The revelatory impulse is present only in bits and pieces. Mostly one is confronted with psychological and ideological disingenuousness — and vanity as well.
Pub Date: May 26, 1972
ISBN: 0307275922
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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