Dead Fashion Girl: A Situationist Detective Story (Strange Attractor Press) - Softcover

Vermorel, Fred

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1907222715 ISBN 13: 9781907222719

Publisher: Strange Attractor Press, 2019

Synopsis

A crime and a six-decade cover-up: the death of a fashion designer in the cesspit of vice and violence that was 1950s London.

In 1954, Jean Mary Townsend was strangled with her own scarf and stripped of her underwear but not sexually assaulted. The subsequent police investigation was bungled, leading to a six-decade cover-up, ensuring that this twenty-one-year-old fashion designer was effectively killed twice: first bodily, and then as her significance and her memory were erased. Fred Vermorel's forensic, troubling (and trouble-making) investigation digs deep into Jean Townsend's life and times, and her transgressive bohemian milieu. It disentangles the lies and bluffs that have obscured this puzzling case for over half a century and offers a compelling solution to her murder and the official secrecy surrounding it.

More than just a true crime story, Vermorel's investigation deploys Townsend's death as a wild card methodology for probing the 1950s: a cesspit of vice and violence, from coprophiles to bombsite gangs and flick knives in the cinema. Densely illustrated with archival material, Dead Fashion Girl is a heavily researched, darkly curious exposé of London's 1950s society that touches on celebrity, royalty, the postwar establishment, and ultimately, tragedy.

About this title

About the Author:

Fred Vermorel is a pioneer of the in-depth study of celebrity and fan cultures, best known for his controversial "anti-biographies" of pop icons including the Sex Pistols, Kate Bush, Vivienne Westwood, and Kate Moss.

About this edition

• Publisher: Strange Attractor Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1907222715
• ISBN 13: 9781907222719
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 440