REVIEW OF STYLE SURFING BY TED POLHEMUS This work effectively sums up all the extraordinary things which have profoundly altered the nature of fashion in the last thirty years - and offers what, four years on, has proved to be a telling vision of what fashion has/will become. Not bad for £15.99. Yet in terms of sales Style Surfing has been disappointing. Reading it after four years, I find the text sharp and amusing, the pictures appropriate and stimulating, the design clean yet interesting. So if you want to know what is happening/will happen in the world of style, get yourself a copy while stocks last. I do not, unfortunately, anticipate that the publishers will produce a re-print and I’ll be dammed if I’m going to write this stuff up yet again in another form. Style Surfing looks at the way old-fashioned fashion and streetstyle got hooked up and, then, how both responded to the Post-Modern condition. There are also some sexy, pervy images - including one of myself in rubber g-string, showing off my nipple piercings. Alternatively, if you are post-literate, watch Blade Runner and Jubilee as they tell the same story in a different way. What to wear in the next millennium? That, of course, we already know: everything and anything and all at once. The only thing which I feel that Style Surfing is lacking is an adequate analysis of the ever growing importance of brands. But (as can be seen in The Language of Brands in this website), I’m in the process of putting this right. - Ted Polhemus