L.A. Chic

Book excerpt: Los Angeles is undergoing a makeover. Leaving behind its image as all freeways and suburbs, sunshine and noir, it is reinventing itself for the twenty-first century as a walkable, pedestrian friendly, ecologically healthy, and global urban hotspot of fashion and style, while driving initiatives to rejuvenate its downtown core, public spaces, and ethnic neighborhoods. By providing a locational history of Los Angeles fashion and style mythologies through the lens of institutions such as manufacturing, museums, and designers and readings of contemporary film, literature and new media, L.A. Chic provides an in-depth analysis of the social changes, urban processes, desires, and politics that inform how the good life is being re-imagined in Los Angeles. Throughout the book, Susan Ingram and Markus Reisenleitner dig up submerged and marginalized elements of the city's cultural history but also tap into the global circuits of urban affect that are being mobilized for promoting L.A. as an example for the global, multi-ethnic city of the future. Engagingly written, highly visual, and featuring numerous photographs throughout, L.A. Chic will appeal to any culturally inclined reader with an interest in Los Angeles, its cultural history, and modern urban style.