Ted Polhemus Books

A look at postmodern British fashion shows how various ethnic, period, and street styles are being combined and transformed

BEAUTY - ADORNMENT - MODESTY - EROTICISM - STYLE & FASHION You upload your brain into a super computer. Are you still you? Anthropologist Ted Polhemus suggests not - meaning, communication and identity derive from the dynamic interface of mind and body. To be is to be incorporated. An anthropology professor once urged Ted Polhemus to study a 'serious' subject rather than 'fashion'. For more than four decades he has sought to prove this professor wrong - exploring how, far from frivolous, the decoration, modification and dress of the body has always and will always be fundamental and essential to what it means to be human. In Body Styles Ted Polhemus brings together all the varied strands of his explorations of the one and only Decorated Ape. Body Styles was first published in 1988. This new version updates and revises its research and text to bring into the 21st century. Also by Ted Fashion & Anti-fashion, Streetstyle, BOOM! - a baby boomer memoir, 1947 - 2022

This is an up-beat look at street fashion from 1940 to today, celebrating some 40 different styletribes, which will accompany a major exhibition on Streetstyle at the Victoria and Albert Museum in November 1994. We see how the styletribes interweave and evolve - the American Modernists of the early 1950s living on in the English Mods of the early 1960s, who became the Hard Mods, then the Skinheads, then the Ois!; while the 1950s Folkies became first the 1970s Hippies and then the New Age Travellers of the 1980s and 1990s. But for today's fashion-conscious young people, this is not all ancient Streetstyle offers the 1990s fashion world a supermarket of styles from which to pick and mix. Anyone is free to be part Beatnik, part Raver, or part Punk, part Grunge; Goths one day and Indie Kids the next. More than 200 illustrations, including 100 in colour, document the styles and their wearers - on the street, but also on the high-fashion catwalk, to which streetstyle has made an enormous, if perhaps unwilling, contribution. Ted Polhemus's many books include "Fashion and Anti Fashion", "Popstyles", "Social Aspects of the Human Body", "Bodystyles" and "Rituals of Love". He is the external curator of the Streetstyle exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Diesel is a fashion phenomenon. Exuding the kind of knowing, eclectic 90s cool that everyone seeks, the Diesel label turns its back on style dictators and eschews slavish trend-following. The result is a global success story with outlets in over 80 countries. The clothes themselves, however, are only half the story. The Diesel ad campaigns have been massively influential, their ironic images, evoking a 1950s consumer paradise, reflecting the quirky, slightly retro nature of the clothing.

"Painting, piercing, pinning; tattoos, talismans; lashes, lips, lines, lumps; studs and stripes. They are all here and much more.

The first book to reflect the global wave of enthusiasm for all forms of body decoration. Along with tattooed celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, men and women around the world are embracing body decoration. If Chanel jewelry is out of reach except to the few, asking for Chanelor Guccitattoos has become the new craze. Nose rings have entered the boardroom, and navel piercing or tattoos at the base of the spine are de rigueur. Ultraviolet face and hair paint, hair extensions, bleached crew cuts, henna design on hands and feet, ornaments made from found objectsthe new creative options give both the single-minded makers of style and the more uncertain majority the opportunity to join in. Ted Polhemus shows how body adornment has been natural to all peoples until the modern period, and why we are now reverting to our roots. After analyzing the various forms of decoration, he shows how we are influenced by the exotic, drawing on tribal or Far Eastern models; the naturalness of artifice and the artifice of the natural look; and how body decoration makes us masters of our own identities. The photographs, taken by the talented young team of UZi PART B, reveal key designs and creative techniques. A practical advice section, specially commissioned from Betti Marenko, includes body preparation, healing times, and safety tips, and provides a valuable guide for those acquiring a tattoo or piercing. 200 color illustrations.