Books:
Neil Boorman was a style journalist. Former editor
of Sleazenation and founder of the Shoreditch
Twat, Boorman was the epitome of London cool.
He was a walking, talking advert for the zeitgeist,
Unfortunately the notion of publicly
who (by his own admission) genuinely believed
destroying one’s personal possessions feels
that the most accurate way of judging character
strikingly similar to other very recent high-profile
was to analyse an individual’s choice of logo.
projects (the most obvious being Michael
As a brand-obsessed, Nathan Barley-esque
Landy’s Break Down in 2001), and this tired
‘culturepreneur’, Boorman would happily grant
conceptual framework interferes with what is on
coverage to any company willing to subsidise his
occasions an engaging and witty enquiry into the
career as writer, DJ and high-profile fashionista.
manipulative tactics of the advertising industry.
He used them and they used him: it was a
Pop-psych authors Oliver James and Alain de
‘knowing’, mutually sustaining relationship.
Botton would describe his condition as affluenza
Then one day it all changed. While sitting
and status anxiety respectively, and Boorman
on the toilet, absentmindedly flicking through the
throughout self-prescribes his obsession with
art-school staple Ways of Seeing (1972), by John
branding as a type of mental illness. On further
Berger, Boorman suddenly realised what most
examination, though, Bonfire of the Brands seems
of us were already thinking: there is more to life
eventually only to document a belated coming-
than Lacoste, Gucci, Adidas and Helmut Lang.
of-age, where our protagonist realises, at the age
And so his very public journey of self-discovery
of thirty-one, that adolescent one-upmanship
began.
and mutual backscratching is an unsatisfactory
Bonfire of the Brands documents in diary
way to make a living, or to live one’s life.
form Boorman’s attempt to rid his life of branding.
That said, Boorman’s conversational (and
After his Berger-induced enlightenment he made
confessional) style makes for an enjoyable read.
it his mission to burn publicly every branded
His journey through a period of self-doubt and
product he owned as an act of intellectual
insecurity, compounded by what is at best a
separation and protest against his former
flippant cure, manages in the main to raise some
paymasters. Such a masochistic act of career
timely questions about why we choose certain
suicide was prompted by a realisation that his
brands over others, and his enquiry into the
insatiable desire to surround himself with
history of unethical marketing techniques
expensive labelled ‘stuff’ was less a statement of
provides a well-researched backdrop to the
individual autonomy and rather a reflection of a
central happening. But while his attempts to
childhood anxiety about not fitting in. The book
subsequently practise what he preaches suggest
illustrates each aspect of his journey, from initial
fleeting moments of integrity, Boorman’s project
revelation through to the planning and execution
never quite escapes the narrow outlook of the
of the final act, and his subsequent attempts to
lifestyle he presumes to reject; whether cynical
live entirely brand-free.
brand-idolator or puritan brand-denier, a life
defined solely by the things you consume never
stops being about ‘me’. Alasdair Hopwood
Bonfire of
THe BrAnDS
By Neil Boorman
Canongate Books, £12.99 (paperback)
Artreview 170
October_books.indd 2 5/9/07 11:02:34
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