Fear And Clothing Unbuckling American Style

As the former New York Times Critical Shopper, and voted one of Fashionista's 50 Most Influential People in New York Fashion, Cintra Wilson knows something about clothes. And in Fear and Clothing, she imparts her no-holds-barred, totally outrageous, astute, and hilarious wisdom to the reader. 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.

Whether you lust after it, loathe it, or feign apathy toward it, fame is in your face. Cintra Wilson gets to the heart of our humiliating fascination with celebrity and all its preposterous trappings in these hilarious, whip-smart, and subversive essays. Often radical and always a scream, Wilson takes on every sacred cow, toppling icons as diverse as Barbra Streisand, Ike Turner, Michael Jackson, and-for obvious reasons-Bruce Willis. She exposes events like the Oscars and even athletic jamborees as having grown a "tumescent aura of Otherness." Wilson's scathing and irresistible dissections of Las Vegas as "the Death Star of Entertainment," and Los Angeles as "a giant peach of a dream crawling with centipedes" pulse with her enlightened rejection of all things false and vain and egotistical. Written with her trademark zeal and intelligence, A Massive Swelling is the antidote for the fame virus that infects us all.

The Costume Designer’s Toolkit explores the wide-ranging skills required to design costumes for live performance in theatre, dance, opera, and themed entertainment. Arranged in chronological order to create a design, each chapter describes tools, strategies, and techniques costume designers use to create lively and believable characters within a story environment. The book provides a step-by-step outline of the costume design process beginning with developing as an artist and creating an artistic vision for a script. It covers a wide range of topics, including: Assessing the scope of a production Understanding design thinking and the creative process Project management and budget forecasting Collaborating with and leading creative teams Current practices in costume rendering and communication Mixing purchased, rented, stock, and built costumes to form a design Designing a garment with impact Fitting costumes on performers Combining grit and grace for a successful career Each topic includes case studies and tips from experienced professionals, identifies vital skills, describes techniques, and reveals the essential elements of artistic leadership, collaboration, and cultural acumen. The Costume Designer’s Toolkit is the perfect guidebook for the student, aspiring, or early-career costume designer, to be used alone or in costume design university courses.

Figures from the Scots-Irish Andrew Jackson to the Caribbean-Irish Rihanna, as well as literature, film, caricature, and beauty discourse, convey how the Irish racially transformed multiple times: in the slave-holding Caribbean, on America's frontiers and antebellum plantations, and along its eastern seaboard. This cultural history of race and centuries of Irishness in the Americas examines the forcibly transported Irish, the eighteenth-century Presbyterian Ulster-Scots, and post-1845 Famine immigrants. Their racial transformations are indicated by the designations they acquired in the Americas: 'Redlegs,' 'Scots-Irish,' and 'black Irish.' In literature by Fitzgerald, O'Neill, Mitchell, Glasgow, and Yerby (an African-American author of Scots-Irish heritage), the Irish are both colluders and victims within America's racial structure. Depictions range from Irish encounters with Native and African Americans to competition within America's immigrant hierarchy between 'Saxon' Scots-Irish and 'Celtic' Irish Catholic. Irish-connected presidents feature, but attention to queer and multiracial authors, public women, beauty professionals, and performers complicates the 'Irish whitening' narrative. Thus, 'Irish Princess' Grace Kelly's globally-broadcast ascent to royalty paves the way for 'America's royals,' the Kennedys. The presidencies of the Scots-Irish Jackson and Catholic-Irish Kennedy signalled their respective cohorts' assimilation. Since Gothic literature particularly expresses the complicity that attaining power ('whiteness') entails, subgenres named 'Scots-Irish Gothic' and 'Kennedy Gothic' are identified: in Gothic by Brown, Poe, James, Faulkner, and Welty, the violence of the colonial Irish motherland is visited upon marginalized Americans, including, sometimes, other Irish groupings. History is Gothic in Irish-American narrative because the undead Irish past replays within America's contexts of race.

New York Times Bestseller Men and Style reaches beyond standard “what to wear” advice: It is equal parts style guide and intriguing conversation about the masculine identity within the world of fashion. David Coggins explores the history of men’s style and learns from some of the most notable tastemakers in the industry and beyond. Its essays and interviews discuss the lessons men learned from their fathers, the mistakes they made as young men, and how they emerged to become better men. Some of the most dapper men in the world discuss bad mustaches, misguided cologne choices, and unfortunate prom tuxedos. All the men here have arrived at a place in the world and have a keen understanding about how they fit in it. Men and Style celebrates singular men who’ve lived well and can tell us about how they earned their worldview. They’re smart enough to absorb the wisdom that’s hidden in the world, and even smarter to wear that wisdom lightly.

Getting Dressed introduces students to sociological concepts via the everyday decision of what to wear. Everyone has to get dressed. And what we wear creates our identity – how people define us and how we define ourselves. But getting dressed is not based on our individual choices and tastes alone. Rather, the process of getting dressed is shaped and limited by a range of social influences that lead us to imitate what others wear and reduces the range of options that are available for us to wear. From designers’ studios to the stores in the mall to our bedrooms, social constraints limit creativity and shape what we wear and how we express our identities when getting dressed.

Years ago, frightened by passion, Eve settled for less: marrying safely, building a solid, ordinary life. Now she longs for more. One day, treasure hunting for a friend’s antiques shop, she finds a mysterious instrument, carved with twining vines. It sends her on a quest—and into a compelling connection with a young man, the son of an old flame. He is twenty years younger than she is, a musician, a seeker, a bohemian—and, to her amazement, he’s pursuing her. Can this euphoric connection last? Eve finds herself defenseless against the force of her fantasies. But she cannot retreat back to safety; she is no longer the woman she was. And even now, she can hardly imagine the woman she will become. Say My Name is more than a love story. It is the story of a woman finding herself through a lover’s eyes, and discovering a strength and independence she never knew she had. On this journey of self-empowerment, Eve will jettison shame and propriety, following only the call of her spirit and the promise of a new, unconventional life. Say My Name is a clarion call to adventures of the heart, and a whisper into every woman’s ear: hear the music! It was written for you.

From Stephen E. Ambrose, bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the inspiring story of the ordinary men of the U.S. army in northwest Europe from the day after D-Day until the end of the bitterest days of World War II. In this riveting account, historian Stephen E. Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Citizen Soldiers opens at 0001 hours, June 7, 1944, on the Normandy beaches, and ends at 0245 hours, May 7, 1945, with the allied victory. It is biography of the US Army in the European Theater of Operations, and Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war. From the high command down to the ordinary soldier, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.