This is a curious little book. My survey of fashion history has been guided mainly by Pinterest and Google Images, so maybe I've acquired a skewed perception of the Fifties. I mention this because Reed's book does not parallel my perception. Because of that, it overcame my initial disappointment with it.

I buy fashion books for the pictures. This one has 102 pages (not counting front and end matter), and half of them are pictures. It's laid out in facing-page pairs (50 of them plus an intro pair), text on the left and picture on the right. Each pair is addressed to a single aspect of Fifties fashion, few of which are what I would consider to be a "look." The vast majority are people as groups or individuals, a few are articles of dress, and a couple actually are what I'd call a "look."

The people includes some I'd heard of (not all of whom I associate with Fifties fashion, or even with fashion at all), several I had not, and several omissions that astonished me. For example, Dovima is on the dust jacket and nowhere else—not even a mention.

I am glad to have heard now of many of the people I'd not heard of at all, so that's all right. Then there are the interesting atypical takes on people I *had* heard of, like Grace Kelly. And then there are the people I didn't associate with fashion. With some, like Alfred Hitchcock, she makes a decent case for their influence. Others, like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, still perplex me.

The writing style is breathless, there are more than a few suspect statements, and it manages to contradict itself: the page on synthetic fibers describes them first as "easy care" and later as "hard to keep clean." On the other hand, there are times when Reed didn't say enough: I'm perfectly willing to accept that Gossard made a new corset better suited to Fifties dresses than its predecessors—but how was it better, or at least why was it worth the mention? Still, there is enough seemingly legit stuff that interests or is new to me that I didn't resent the flaws. I genuinely appreciate the book, even if it is mainly for giving me new people to wish I looked like.

Now I would like to complain about the title, specifically the "changed the 1950s" part. Those things did not change the Fifties, they made the Fifties (as far as fashion is concerned). The Fifties began as a blank slate that was filled in as it passed. One cannot change what does not yet exist, one can only change from what has been. (I don't think Reed called anything "timeless," though, so she gets points for that.) ( )