Author: Giulia Mensitieri

Publisher: La Découverte

Comments: This book, based on a doctorate in anthropology at EHESS, France, is packed with revelations about the fashion world. For example that a number of models strutting the runways of top fashion houses are doing so for free; that the clothes presented are assembled often for several months, day and night, by talented workers on minimum wages. This story of stylists, models, photographers, creators and make-up artists is a story of passion and devotion which enables all these actors to accept the unacceptable, and to trade their flexibility for a form of slavery. It uncovers a new form of insecurity characteristic of modern capitalistic cultural industries, which combine with glamour, fame and visibility. The book is an attempt to decode the invisible dynamics underpinning the fashion industry and thus “deglamourize” it.