Book Review: Fashion, Culture and Identity - Davis.

Fred Davis' Fashion, Culture and Identity serves as a thorough introduction to the idea of fashion as a culture. His analysis of various topics under the fashion culture umbrella are mostly broad concepts, but they do give rise to ideas the reader might not have contemplated about the fashion world otherwise. Truth be told, Davis ambitiously crammed a lot of information into 210 pages but to reiterate, he covered a lot of ground and provided enough sources (the book is almost entirely cited from other theorists and historians) for the reader to take up further investigation on specific topics later.

The first two chapters are difficult to get through, as Davis provides an overdrawn, ambivalent introduction of fashion culture, but he makes the point that part of fashion's problem is its ambivalence, which is true in itself. But his emphasis on ambivalence and ambiguity, comparing at times using them interchangeably and then differentiating, is almost too ambivalent of a concept itself and causes the reader to lose interest.

But plowing through to the next chapter reveals more specific topics, such as reflections on gender specificity, androgyny, sex and erotica, fashion cycle analysis, and an in-depth look at the fashion process, something that few non-designers (and I could even include a few in that) never think about nor comprehend generally. These topics raise questions and are incredibly thought-provoking on a basic level. Davis does a good job to take the most specific and explainable pieces of a broad spectrum to help answer the question of what fashion says about its wearers.

Another problem however is Davis' inability to draw sufficient conclusions and answer his own question, however. This is a bit forgivable as his is an introductory book on a relatively nouveau topic and therefore, he is merely providing bulk theories that provide forthcoming theorists to build upon and come up with their own conclusions. He does well not to be biased when analyzing other theorists, by providing high and low points.

Fashion, Culture and Identity gives readers a fascinating view on the outer limits of fashion culture. I recommend this to any fashion student as an introduction and to provide a base from which to develop their own theories, ideas and specialties. Davis only touches on some of the things fashion culture encompasses. Everyone needs a place to start; Davis does just that.