Fetish Style traces the history, forms and tendencies of sub-cultural fashions that are popular in both mainstream and alternative fashion cultures. Presenting the world of subcultural fetish clothing design in all of its richness and beauty, this book explores the idea of fetish as subversive and repressive as reflected in clothing choices in people of all ages and cultures. Linking the fetishistic aspects of contemporary culture with everyday clothing as dictated by fashion and merchandizing, Fetish Style presents a fascinating study of historical as well as 21st century subcultures. Case studies include the Japanese-influenced 'tribes' of the various Lolita formations, the Shotaru (male Lolita), the club scene, the Goths, the hip-hop fashions and other locally-formed fetishized practices. Fetish Style will be key reading for anyone interested in fetish fashion both past and present.

Fetish Style traces the history, forms and tendencies of sub-cultural fashions that are popular in both mainstream and alternative fashion cultures. Presenting the world of subcultural fetish clothing design in all of its richness and beauty, this book explores the idea of fetish as subversive and repressive as reflected in clothing choices in people of all ages and cultures. Linking the fetishistic aspects of contemporary culture with everyday clothing as dictated by fashion and merchandizing, Fetish Style presents a fascinating study of historical as well as 21st century subcultures. Case studies include the Japanese-influenced 'tribes' of the various Lolita formations, the Shotaru (male Lolita), the club scene, the Goths, the hip-hop fashions and other locally-formed fetishized practices. Fetish Style will be key reading for anyone interested in fetish fashion both past and present.

Kinky boots, corsets, underwear as outerwear, second-skin garments of rubber and leather, uniforms, body piercing.... Today everything from a fetishist's dream appears on the fashion runways. Although some people regard fetish fashion as exploitative and misogynistic, others interpret it as a positive Amazonian statement--couture Catwoman. But the connection between fashion and fetishism goes far beyond a few couture collections. For the past thirty years, the iconography of sexual fetishism has been increasingly assimilated into popular culture. Before Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, there was Mrs. Peel, heroine of the 1960s television show "The Avengers," who wore a black leather catsuit modeled on a real fetish costume. Street styles like punk and the gay "leatherman" look also testify to the influence of fetishism. The concept of fetishism has recently assumed a growing importance in critical thinking about the cultural construction of sexuality. Yet until now no scholar with an in-depth knowledge of fashion history has studied the actual clothing fetishes themselves. Nor has there been a serious exploration of the historical relationship between fashion and fetishism, although erotic styles have changed significantly and "sexual chic" has become increasingly conspicuous. Cultural historian Valerie Steele has devoted much of her career to the study of the relationship between clothing and sexuality, and is uniquely qualified to write this book. Marshalling a dazzling array of evidence from pornography, psychology, and history, as well as interviews with individuals involved in sexual fetishism, sadomasochism, and cross-dressing, Steele illuminates the complex relationship between appearance and identity. Based on years of research, her book Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power explains how a paradigm shift in attitudes toward sex and gender has given rise to the phenomenon of fetish fashion. "Steele is to fetish dressing what Anne Rice is to vampires," writes Christa Worthington of Elle magazine, "the intellectual interpreter of...wishes beyond our ken." According to Steele, fetishism shows how human sexuality is never just a matter of doing what comes naturally; fantasy always plays an important role. Steele provides provocative answers to such questions as: Why is black regarded as the sexiest color? Is fetishizing the norm for males? Does fetish fashion reflect a fear of AIDS? And why do so many people love shoes?

When asked about the difference between art and sexuality, Picasso replied: "They are one and the same, because art is always erotic." The best creations from 39 international designers are collected in this volume. An indispensible source of inspiration for every fetish fan.

This book delves into the fetishistic world of contemporary fashion to reveal a daring and instinctive future for style and culture. It investigates topics including the evolution of taste from birth to adulthood, the elevation of shoes through ever-higher heels, the psychology of branding, the effects of infantilism, the power of the color black, the fetishizing of objects, and the interaction of architecture, fashion, and the body. The avant garde art performances of Leigh Bowery are highlighted in honor of his continually growing influence on contemporary culture. Talent is sourced from around the globe, focusing on innovative and original content that illustrates a dramatic shift in aesthetics. Bolder, crazier, and more outlandish styles are on the fashion horizon, making this book a key reference in a new era of experimentation and intense creativity.

Goeddes images are fresh and captivating, in the tradition of the greatest fetish photographers.

Since Ursula Andress's white-bikini debut in Dr No, 'Bond Girls' have been simultaneously celebrated as fashion icons and dismissed as 'eye-candy'. But the visual glamour of the women of James Bond reveals more than the sexual objectification of female beauty. Through the original joint perspectives of body and fashion, this exciting study throws a new, subversive light on Bond Girls. Like Coco Chanel, fashion's 'eternal' mademoiselle, these 'Girls' are synonymous with an unconventional and dynamic femininity that does not play by the rules and refuses to sit still; far from being the passive objects of the male gaze, Bond Girls' active bodies instead disrupt the stable frame of Bond's voyeurism. Starting off with an original re-assessment of the cultural roots of Bond's postwar masculinity, the book argues that Bond Girls emerge from masculine anxieties about the rise of female emancipation after the Second World War and persistent in the present day. Displaying parallels with the politics of race and colonialism, such tensions appear through sartorial practices as diverse as exoticism, power dressing and fetish wear, which reveal complex and often contradictory ideas about the patriarchal and imperial ideologies associated with Bond. Attention to costume, film and gender theory makes Bond Girls: Body, Gender and Fashion essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, media and cultural studies, and for anyone with an interest in Bond.

Body Style reveals the subcultural body as a site for understanding subcultural identity, resistance, agency, and fashion. Analyzed, theorized, politicized, and sensationalized, the subcultural body functions as a framework where individuals build a sense of self and subcultural identity. Drawing on specific subcultural examples and interviews with members, Body Style explores the subcultural body and its style within global culture. Body Style is the result of over twelve years of research examining these intersections within specific urban subcultures, including Urban Tribals, Modern Primitives, Punks, Cybers, Industrials, Skaters, and others. Divided into three main sections on subcultural body history, subcultural body identity and subcultural body styles, this book will be of particular interest to students of dress and fashion as well as those coming to subculture from sociology and cultural studies.

"Fetishism (supposing that it existed)": a preface to the translation of Charles de Brosses's Transgression / Rosalind C. Morris -- Introduction: fetishism, figurism, and myths of enlightenment / Daniel H. Leonard -- A note on the translation / Daniel H. Leonard -- On the worship of fetish gods; or, a parallel of the ancient religion of Egypt with the present religion of Nigritia / Charles de Brosses ; translated by Daniel H. Leonard -- After De Brosses: fetishism, translation, comparativism, critique / Rosalind C. Morris -- A fetiche is a fetiche: no knowledge without difference of the word: rereading De Brosses -- Excursus: recontextualizing De Brosses, with Pietz in and out of Africa -- Re Kant and the good fetishists among us -- Hegel: back to the heart of darkness -- Fetishism against itself; or, Marx's two fetishisms -- The great fetish; or, the fetishism of the one -- Freud and the return to the dark continent: the other fetish -- Conjuncture: Freud and Marx, via Lacan -- Anthropology's fetishism: the custodianship of reality -- Fetishism reanimated: surrealism, ethnography, and the war against decay -- Deconstruction's fetish: undecidable, or the mark of Hegel -- Rehistoricizing generalized fetishism: the era of objects -- Anthropological redux: the reality of fetishism -- The fetish is dead, long live fetishism

To understand why the concept of aesthetic sexuality is important, we must consider the influence of the first volume of Foucault's seminal The History of Sexuality. Arguing against Foucault's assertions that only scientia sexualis has operated in modern Western culture while ars erotica belongs to Eastern and ancient societies, Byrne suggests that modern Western culture has indeed witnessed a form of ars erotica, encompassed in what she calls aesthetic sexuality'. To argue for the existence of aesthetic sexuality, Byrne examines mainly works of literature to show how, within these texts, sexual practice and pleasure are constructed as having aesthetic value, a quality that marks these experiences as forms of art. In aesthetic sexuality, value and meaning are located within sexual practice and pleasure rather than in their underlying cause; sexuality's raison d'être is tied to its aesthetic value, at surface level rather than beneath it. Aesthetic sexuality, Byrne shows, is a product of choice, a deliberate strategy of self-creation as well as a mode of social communication.