Independent Publisher ✱ Minor Theoretical Literature ✱ Berlin/Nicosia
Empires Over Skin: How fashion conquered our World (2025)
by M.Y.B.
Metadata
Dimensions: A6
Binding: Perfect Bound
Pages: TBC
ISBN: 978-9925-8207-4-0
Paper: 300g/m2 Bilderdruck Matt & 80g/m2 Munken White
Language: English
Released: October 2025 (1st Edition)
Author: MeltdownYourBooks (M.Y.B.)
Translation & Editing: Nicholas E. Powers
Art & Design: Rachel Lilim
Layout & Typography: Polymnia Tsinti
“The mounds of clothing that adorn my floor and the foot of my bed sometimes grow too large, and suddenly I am sinking into the matted mess of fabrics. On days like these I can’t help but feel that clothing, not just my clothing, but the very idea of clothing, is swallowing me up. Clothing is this immensity looming over me, yet somehow a microscopic itch in my brain, prodding me and twisting itself into knots–an irritation I accept for the temporary bliss of scratching it.”
About
To be human is to wake up, everyone morning, and to don the costume that completes your identity, for better or worse, by choice or by coercion.
The task this book undertakes requires a particular kind of author, one who can recognise and sort through the contradictions on a theoretical level, but also someone who does not abstract the topic from their position as a subject—a critical book of fashion must be written by someone who lives it, someone who is passionate enough to write in good faith, because fashion isn’t just Gucci and Sweatshops—which themselves are rightly condemned for all kinds of reasons—because fashion itself is merely the tip of what may be one of the biggest, deepest ice bergs of all—Fashion is a philosophical black hole, one which drags everything into its infinite stomach, from semiotics to psychoanalysis, to art, design and craftsmanship, to economics and production chains, to speculation and historicising, to algebra, journalism and so on.
Yet, this isn’t a philosophy book because it is down-to-earth; it is just as celebratory and excited as it is critical. M.Y.B. begins by simply looking down, and beginning to describe the shoes upon their feet—it unravels dialectically and uncovers long chains of connections that stretch back through time.