Rating: 
Summary: Confusing, very intellectual
Review: When I first read this book, I was 18, a freshman in college. I had spent the entirety of my existance under the fishbowl of advertising. Although I had seen styles come and go, I really didn't understand enough to truly fathom what Ewen was saying. This, I think is Ewens's primary weekness. He comes off as attacking something that most people don't really see as existing. Fasion and style are too easily made straw men. Especially important is that fasion and style are usually under some sort of attack, either for using sex to interest people, for promoting an unrealistic standard of beauty, or even as the ultimate cause of violence and poverty when people murder others for their shoes or their coats. It is far too easy to mistake Ewen's attack on style as an attack on having aesthetic values at all. His use of fascist and proto-fascist sources as examples of the evil of style also weakens his work, as it looks like he is trying to create a "slipperly slope" argument between Vouge and Mien Kampf. Ultimately, I would say the book is worth reading, but only if one is looking for a way to better express what one already feels. If you are looking for something that will change minds, this is not the book.
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