Get Free Shipping on orders over $0
Torn : Fashion and Postmodernism - Eugene Rabkin

Torn

Fashion and Postmodernism

By: Eugene Rabkin

Paperback | 1 September 2026

At a Glance

Paperback


$36.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $9.19 with

 or 

Available for Backorder. We will order this from our supplier however there isn't a current ETA.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, fashion has undergone a paradoxical shift: it has grown creatively impoverished despite becoming more culturally relevant. Increasingly, the industry s output feels listless, unexciting, like a pastiche of past styles, not genuine innovation. What caused this? How did fashion design get reduced to logoed merch? Why does spectacle outweigh reality? How did business priorities come to eclipse creativity? Eugene Rabkin founder of StyleZeitgeist magazine and noted fashion journalist, lecturer, and critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Financial Times, and The Business of Fashion offers an unflinching answer. Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism examines how the postmodern turn, with its dismantling of hierarchies and embracing of commerciality, its democratization of taste and reliance on irony and poptimism, has undermined fashion. Across ten incisive chapters, these pages trace the industry s journey from an era that produced Alexander McQueen s theatrical genius, Helmut Lang s modernism, and Martin Margiela s conceptual rigor to an era dominated by corporations and celebrities. Along the way, Rabkin shows how the image is decoupled from its substance, how commerce has overridden editorial authority, and how fashion s relationship with the arts has shifted from symbiotic to parasitic.

More in Fashion & Textiles Design

Costume Art - Andrew Bolton

Paperback

RRP $124.95

$86.75

31%
OFF
The Art of Star Wars : Andor (The Complete Series) - Phil Szostak
Fashionpedia : The Visual Dictionary Of Fashion Design - Fashionary
Little Book of Dior : Little Books of Fashion - Karen Homer

RRP $29.99

$17.75

41%
OFF
Tom Ford - Tom Ford

Hardcover

RRP $290.00

$200.99

31%
OFF
Metric Pattern Cutting for Women's Wear - Winifred Aldrich

RRP $82.95

$60.75

27%
OFF
Reflective Stitch : Time and place in textile art - Claire Wellesley-Smith

RRP $50.00

$38.75

22%
OFF
Vogue Knitting The Ultimate Knitting Book : Revised and Updated - Vogue Knitting Magazine
CBK: Carolyn Bessette Kennedy : A Life in Fashion - Sunita Nair

RRP $100.00

$70.99

29%
OFF
Style Icons: Kylie Minogue : A Dress-Up Paper Doll Book - Elizabeth Weitzman
Chanel : The Vocabulary of Style - Jérôme Gautier

RRP $90.00

$64.99

28%
OFF
Life Stories : Textile art inspired by people and memories - Ali Ferguson
Barbie (TM): The World Tour : Barbie - MARGOT ROBBIE

RRP $50.00

$38.75

22%
OFF