Patricia Mears

Probably deserves two stars rather than three. It's shocking how prestigious university presses like Yale can publish such badly edited books (there must be at least one glaring typographical error on every fifth page). It feels as though this book was just an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the topic, in the wake of the t.v. series "Mad Men" and the reissue of "Take Ivy". I expected the book to be a general overview of the subject, but it's really just a random selection of nine show more essays, with very little to link them--it's actually debatable whether "Ivy style" itself even links them. Of the nine essays, two are about Ivy style's British antecedents, and one is about Japanese appropriations. The whole concept of "Ivy" style is astonishingly under-theorized. The book has a weird subtitle, "Radical Conformists", which is never really explained and is actually a little disturbing (maybe it's just me, but "radical conformity" sounds like fascism). The best chapter is Christian Chensvold's interview with Richard Press. show less