Ebook: Fear and clothing: unbuckling American style

Introduction: Starve, smoke, kill : Or: walk a mile in my Frankenhooker boots, Or: style matters, because clothes make you psychologically naked -- San Francisco/the macramé belt : a closet from which to emerge a butterfly -- Washington DC/the beltway : war and pleats : I love a man in a command-form fashion statement -- Utah, ho!/the chastity belt : here come the brides -- Jackson, Wyoming/the frost belt : sled dogs, cowboys, and wolf-fur codpieces -- Miami/the sand belt : nudes in jewelry -- Kansas/the gun belt : crow-eating and cognitive dissonance in the heartland -- Los Angeles/the star belt : Hollywood and the uncanny Valley -- The 137th Kentucky Derby/the bourbon belt : lifestyles of the rich and plastered -- The Iowa State Fair/the butter belt : the culture in agriculture -- The belle jar/the Bible belt : Scarlett wears her corset on the inside -- Brooklyn/the futility belt : the false patina of poverty drag -- The underworld/the garter belt : appropriations and inappropriations -- New York (high) New York (low)/the money belt : the rich get richer, the poor get poorer; they both wear turquoise fur -- Never-never land/the emperor's new belt : you can't always get what you want -- Occupied territory/the bandolero : Guy Fawkes is the new black -- Conclusion: To thine own style be true.;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, Wilson 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 mind, Wilson 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--Publisher's description.