From the rise of the Fashion Cafe to the phenomenon of the supermodel, from "House of Style" to "Unzipped," the world of fashion has taken center stage in contemporary culture, for better or for worse. In turn, although the idea of fashion has been in circulation since time immemorial, not until recently has its profound and variegated effects-on economic activity, on social and sexual mores, and on aesthetic and psychological formulations-been fully considered.

With delicacy and wit, Fashion: An Introduction investigates the different sides of recent debates over the production, marketing, and consumption of fashion. Drawing on economics, art, psychology, commerce, history, and the everyday, Joanne Finkelstein considers fashion in its various guises-as body decoration and costume, as a language and a form of display, as an expression of sexuality and as part of the urban experience. In so doing, she has given us the perfect introduction to fashion's social, economic, and aesthetic impact on the way we think and act."

From the rise of the Fashion Cafe to the phenomenon of the supermodel, from "House of Style" to "Unzipped," the world of fashion has taken center stage in contemporary culture, for better or for worse. In turn, although the idea of fashion has been in circulation since time immemorial, not until recently has its profound and variegated effects-on economic activity, on social and sexual mores, and on aesthetic and psychological formulations-been fully considered.

With delicacy and wit, Fashion: An Introduction investigates the different sides of recent debates over the production, marketing, and consumption of fashion. Drawing on economics, art, psychology, commerce, history, and the everyday, Joanne Finkelstein considers fashion in its various guises-as body decoration and costume, as a language and a form of display, as an expression of sexuality and as part of the urban experience. In so doing, she has given us the perfect introduction to fashion's social, economic, and aesthetic impact on the way we think and act."

Public spaces have become platforms for the invention and display of self-identity, especially in the affluent West where the restaurant, from local cafe to Michelin-starred establishment, deftly stages these performances. In this follow-up to her classic Dining Out: A Sociology of Modern Manners, Joanne Finkelstein takes a fragment of social life-restaurant dining-and uses it to examine the dramatic effect our public behavior and social habits have on our private desires and sense of identity. In Fashioning Appetite, the restaurant becomes a liminal space in which public and private boundaries are constantly renegotiated, where our personal celebrations and seductions are conducted within full view of the next table, and where eating alone has become a perilous social minefield. When food is fetishized and identity becomes a capitalist commodity, the experience of the restaurant transforms appetite into both a pleasure and a torment in which being satisfied with one's meal is linked to being satisfied with oneself. Applying new research in emotional capitalism to popular culture's pervasive images of conspicuous consumption, Finkelstein builds a cultural portrait in which every forkful is weighted with meaning.