Street Style

McDermott, a British design professor and critic, maintains that punk played a central role in revitalizing the British fashion industry in the 1980s, as shown in the radical but wearable creations of Vivienne Westwood. She also examines other areas influenced by punk, including the graphics of record sleeves and in the layered layouts of the style magazines The Face and i-Dstet, which McDermott calls ""the creative centre of London.'' Likewise, she surveys British interior design, arguing that it has reached innovative postpunk peaks in the ``motorway aesthetic'' of the Hacienda nightclub and the ``theatrical setting'' of singer Adam Ant's flat. She concludes that these anarchic, idiosyncratic designers share an approach that ``exploits a national sense of irony and humour.'' This is lavishly illustrated with 50 black-and-white and 170 color photographs, and over 35 ``designer biographies'' are featured in an appendix. (June)