Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

great

I recommend!

I found this book to be very informative, well researched and a very good read. I would recommend thisbook to all with even a mild interest in this subject matter.

The book was really nice to read, it gives you insight into what the more known fetishes are and their history.

Its about the history of Fetish nothing to do much about dominatrix only a lttle style...I wanted to learn about being a dominatrix...There was nothing in the book at all on the subject...Would you like to buy it back?

You would not think that a book concerning Fetish trends etc would put you to sleep but this book will. You may nod awake for the photos but the text is a mish-mosh of psycho-drivel, unrelated and uninteresting facts and sketchy history.

Valerie Steele has gathered a vast range of expert opinions, anecdotes (and some experimental findings) and organised them under a fairly simple chapter structure: "What is fetishism"; "Fashion and fetishism"; "The corset"; "Shoes"; "Underwear"; "Second skin" and" Fashion, Fetish, Fantasy". Her sources are carefully identified so that interested readers could follow up and get stuck into the details of the expert views. She often refers to Freud and others of the same ilk, and I learned a great deal about the beliefs of several "big name" expert people, which was good. After a while the detail becomes somewhat overwhelming, and I would have appreciated a more careful "standing-back" and "summarising" of all the detail. As one would expect, the narrative revolves around (and keeps returning to) the overlap between fetish and fashion, in an authoritative way; I am not sure what I learned about sex and power ... getting a better grip on the psychology the four themes would have helped.The book shows some signs of its age, introducing some ideas (and fetishes, and practices) as if they are recent and not really embracing the present form and function of the fetish and fashion business. For example: the hundreds of special-interest forums, the impact of the social web, and the instant access to a vast range of 'material'.Overall, this book was an engaging read that helps to set out a "first view" of what is (or has been) going on. I shall be looking to see what else Valerie Steele has written.

This is a disappointing book. With Valerie Steele's credentials as a fashion commentator and an academic, you might well suppose that the book would examine the influences of the fetish world on everyday fashion. Sadly, there is very little here in the way of analysis or examination. Steele seems to have no great arguments or theories and the book presents nothing in the way of a case to explain anything much. The author has clearly done an awful lot of homework, and read widely around the subject, as the impressive notes and bibliography demonstrate. But quotes from other authors are trotted out, not in the defence of any argument on her part, but almost gratuitously.The book is divided into some promising chapters, asking, What is Fetish? (which turns out to be deeply dull) and then looking at various clothing fetishes, from corsets to shoes, to underwear and second skin (leather and rubber). Sadly, these chapters devote much time to quotes from contributors to old fetish magazines, which are purely anecdotal and not remotely interesting. There are no original interviews with some of the designers who have worked in this fashion area, such as Thierry Mugler, Versace, Gaultier et al, to probe what their real motivations have been. And there is little attempt to try to dig beneath the surface to find out why some of these fashion ideas have been adopted by the mainstream. Steele tells us that leather and rubber have become widely accepted as everyday wear, but no answer is forthcoming as to why this should be the case. The chapters end abruptly, as if having produced the requisite number or words, it is time to move on to something else.Her most interesting insight, appearing at the beginning of the book, is to see fetishism as a continuum, probably shared in some respect by most people at one end, and evolving into full-on fetishism where the object replaces the human at the other. However, having postulated this, the book does nothing to argue this idea, and she concentrates on the extreme levels of fetishism, which have nothing to do with mainstream fashion. There are a few attempts at psychoanalysis, borrowed from other commentators, but these are mostly of a Freudian nature and seem hugely simplistic and out of date. Is the population really entirely traumatised by a castration complex?So what you get is a lot of anecdote about fetishism, and not much about sex, power and fashion - certainly not anything that looks like a viewpoint. It is very hard, having finished the book to see what the reader has actually learned and how Steele has contributed to the debate, such as it is. It reads very much as a lost opportunity to do some real examination of the subject.Finally it should be mentioned that the photos are very poor. They have been printed on some arty corrugated paper and then scanned in. The results are extremely murky black and white reproductions. They pepper the text, but often serve as gratuitous illustrations, perhaps to reduce word count, which in many cases do nothing to elucidate. The book was published pretty much in the pre-internet era, so that readers can now find far better illustrations with the minimum of googling. It's a pity, as the choice of photos is quite good, but in this quality, they do nothing much to enhance the work.

A good reference for anyone whose work involves writing about the inter-war years in Berlin or has an interest in the realities underlying the world of Sally Bowles - or, indeed, of her creator Christopher Isherwood. The cross-dressing, the sexual ambiguity, the sado-masochism both implied and enacted. A serious book for the serious reader/researcher. Condition good. Price realistic. Well packed and reasonably punctually delivered.

This is exactly what I needed. I've seen and used this book in my university library and now I have my own copy to help with my dissertation. Having it second hand was no issue either. Sold as "very good" meant I received an immaculate book for less than half the original price

Questo libro è un discorso generico sullo stile fetish nella moda, ci sono esempi risalenti alla fine dell'800 e inizi '900, specialmente per quanto riguarda i corsetti, ma anche esempi da Thierry Mugler, quindi da sfilate di alta moda. Purtroppo non è molto dettagliato, a volte i discorsi sono generici e a volte invece va troppo nel dettaglio senza mostrare fotogradie che provino l'esempio. Ecco, le fotografie... Sono tutte in bianco e nero e sono sfuocate, non si capisce bene cosa mostrano a volte. Per un libro con questo prezzo mi aspettavo molto altro e ne sono delusa. Secondo me poi sono affrontati pochi indumenti, che sono i classici conosciuto da tutti superficialmente come cose fetish: corsetti, lingerie, scarpe. Tutto qua. Poi si parla sia di pelle sia di latex. Ma lì finisce. Forse come lavoro è un po' datato e l'autrice dovrebbe rivederlo, aggiornarlo, ampliarlo e farne un'edizione magari più costosa ma con foto decenti stavolta.Ho dato 3 stelle perché comunque è un lavoro interessante, ma poteva fare molto meglio.