Rating: 
Summary: The Substance of Style
Review: An extremely important book written from the perspective of a keen and honest observer. Ms Postrel is an accomplished writer whose English is both compelling and convincing. Naomi Kliens sobering counterpoints, mentioned above, entirely misses the boat. The positive message elucidating the dynamics of style informs those who have read the book. The No Logo opinion of Klein, reveals her underlying mistrust of the market and her complete lack of awarness that she has consumer-conferred power within it. There's a better way to consume - with self interest - and with style. If you don't like it - don't buy it.
Rating:
Summary: The Substance of Style
Review: An extremely important book written from the perspective of a keen and honest observer. Ms Postrel is an accomplished writer whose English is both compelling and convincing. Naomi Kliens sobering counterpoints, mentioned above, entirely misses the boat. The positive message elucidating the dynamics of style informs those who have read the book. The No Logo opinion of Klein, reveals her underlying mistrust of the market and her complete lack of awarness that she has consumer-conferred power within it. There's a better way to consume - with self interest - and with style. If you don't like it - don't buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: Naomi Klein's Sobering Counterpoints
Review: First of all, four stars for Postrel for writing an important book--even if its position underscores a crisis she wants to cast in the pretty little hues of progress.If you think Virginia Postrel is "on to something", I urge you to take a look at Naomi Klein's "No Logo". Postrel is, indeed, "on to something"--I just think it's a very troubling and dangerous "something". Klein's book illuminates the reasons. Klein discusses the political and psychological dangers of "branding". She states the following in her book: "branding becomes troubling...when the balance tips dramatically in favor of the sponsoring brand, stripping the hosting culture of its inherent value and treating it as little more than a promotional tool." I, for one, want to maintain--against Postrel--that there are some, if porous, conceptual and political boundaries to be maintained between the corporate surface and stylized "lifestyle aesthetic" and the democratic, popular and public spaces of discourse where diversity is about politics, not style. We need to think democratically about substance as style: if we live like this as a mantra, what changes? When politics and governance become even more stylized and "non-substantial" than they already are, what happens to our culture? Some people are wondering in Dean's loss in Iowa is, in part, due to the fact that his internet support created a simulacrum of broad support but that his tech-media driven campaign failed to garner *actual*, real-delegate support. Did his campaign in Iowa win the beauty contest but fail the written exam? Let's see what happens. Also, is associating style and the aesthetic with women, gay people or a "feminization" of culture really liberating to women, gay folk and all citizens who aspire to depth (integrity, a *realistic* sense of authenticity, political solidarity, religious and a spiritual connection with something beyond this city)? When surface becomes substance and style becomes value, we have to worry that we do not go in the direction of hedonistic materialism. I say all of this as a gay man. If that surprises you, perhaps you have fallen into the marketing trap of associating homosexuals (and probably women) with style, surface and consumption as opposed to substance, depth and production; it's probably the case that the stark dichotomies between these things don't work either but it's certainly still also the case that we shouldn't aspire to be a superficial culture or stylized market constructs in our agency. Not to mention the fact that real people (mostly women and children) are starving and dying in sweatshops abroad to create the material props of our stylized "lifestyles" and to satiate our desire for commodities and *things* (which is, after we demystify corporate branding-style advertising, what the things Postrel talks about really *are*).
Rating: 
Summary: please don't waste your money
Review: I bought this book and kept reading right on until the last page. I kept thinking that Ms. Postrel would eventually make some kind of point. She didn't. This book definitely had NO substance and the only Style was the dust cover. Save your money and buy something else!!
Rating:
Summary: please don't waste your money
Review: I bought this book and kept reading right on until the last page. I kept thinking that Ms. Postrel would eventually make some kind of point. She didn't. This book definitely had NO substance and the only Style was the dust cover. Save your money and buy something else!!
Rating:
Summary: Style is Substance
Review: I knew from a few pages in that this was going to be an important book, and I was not disapointed. I have convinced three designers I work with to get their own copies - one of them bought me lunch to say thanks! I will probably start giving copies to clients who seem to view design as a necessary evil and aesthitics as an afterthought to their business plan. If you want to understand how design functions - or should function - in business, BUY THIS BOOK. If I were anywhere close to being able to write as intelligently and clearly as Virgina Postrel I could probably find the words to recommend this book strongly enough. But since I fall short - all I can do is repeat myself - BUY THIS BOOK. StMack
Hold the Mayo
www.nomayo.blogspot.com
Rating:
Summary: Postrel just wants your money
Review: I saw Virginia Postrel speak recently at Rhode Island School of Design, and it was clear that she knew nothing about aesthetics. Starbucks, Walmart, all of the "case studies" she cited have everything to do with consumerism, mass production and savvy marketing and nothing to do with aesthetics or the inherent value of design. At the beginning of her speech, Postrel apologed for the awful design of her powerpoint presentation and admitted that she was not a designer and had no background in design criticism. What she fills her book with are endless ridiculous and unfounded observations like the assertion that America has a higher design consciousness than Europe, and that Houston, TX is a metropolitan city that can be compared to Paris on the basis of style. It is clear that Postrel has not a clue what the definition of aesthetics even is, but knows that if she fills the subtitle of her books with enough buzzwords she will sell millions. If you want to read about design aesthetics from someone who knows what he is talking about, you'd be much better off reading "How to Design" by George Nelson. Or get some actual design criticism in I.D. magazine every month. Don't buy into Postrel's BS. Even the cover of her book is badly designed! So much for promoting "aesthetics" and "style."
Rating: 
Summary: good job, wrong premise
Review: Ms Postrel did a fine job as a reporter, describing the extant cultural trend toward aesthetics as primary in virtually everything; her error is in thinking that this is a good thing Thorstein Veblen coined the term 'conspicuous consumption' back in 1894, and the worldwide cultural effects of this destructive value continue, and, per Postrel's research, are becoming inescapable -- the full realisation being hordes of consumers wearing t-shirts bearing the logos (advertising) of products that they cannot afford to buy so you have poseurs spending double the sensible value for a given product just so that they can display their robotic aesthetic taste, the necessity of which precludes any concern for the have-nots of the world the aestheticism described in this book by Postrel is empty -- a symptom of the disease called Western culture -- and her promotion of aestheticism ignores meaning in the ethical sense
Rating:
Summary: Simple points made well
Review: Never before have humans mastered production and distribution so well that function and value become givens, making aesthetics the ground of marginal competition. Design, therefore, has real and substantive, if hard to measure, economic value. These are the two points that Virginia Postrel makes in The Substance of Style. It takes her 191 pages to do so, however, and this distresses some who feel that these obvious points could have been made in two sentences. I came to this book with the same trepidation because I didn't particularly care for Postrel's last book, The Future and its Enemies. But, I ended up a convert. Sure, Postrel's thesis here is a simple one, but this only underscores its elegance. That we all demand ambiance with our coffee and a flourish with our door knobs is something many folks take for granted. But the thing is, it's an unprecedented change in the history of human consumption and I don't know of anyone who has catalogued it like Postrel has. That profitability and business survival increasingly depend on the intangible "feel" of a product or service--and not on its traditional utility--will still come as a surprise to many old-school thinkers. What Postrel does in this book is engagingly prove her two points beyond a doubt. Sure, they're simple points, but the book is short and packed with interesting anecdotes. I recommend this book to anyone interested in design, but especially to folks who think there's no value in looks or those who might be tempted to fault our modern "consumerist" culture as wasteful.
Rating:
Summary: An incredible exploration of the economic impact of design
Review: Over the course of the last ten years, design has undergone an profound economic and cultural renaissance. After years of producing ugly, 'merely' functional products, modern industry has begun to awaken to the power of aesthetics - witness the iPod, the Cooper Mini, and Michael Graves housewares in the aisles of your local Target. Powered by new technologies and a recognition that design is a powerful business differentiator, we've experienced a tremendous flowering of aesthetic forms and choices. Lots of critics suggest that this great multiplication of forms is wasteful, decadent, or superficial, but author Virginia Postrel provides a very compelling defense of the aesthetic economy, with lots of engaging prose and examples. She untangles the complex forces that have underwritten design's rebirth. And she suggests that we can find not only pleasure in style, but deep meaning as well. This is as cogent and compelling an exploration of design as I have ever read. Everyone, (and especially designers) who want to understand the rise of the Age of Aesthetics should have a copy of this book on their shelf.
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