PREORDER — will be shipped mid-late November. (TBC)

“A must read. This book starts with a first person elaboration of the author's own attachment to what they wear, and from there, moves into an elaboration about the awareness one needs in order to have agency in the midst of fashioning forces.” — Lucas Ferraço Nassif

ABOUT
To be human is to wake up, every morning, and don the costume that completes your identity, for better or for worse, by choice or by coercion.

There is nothing on this planet quite like fashion; it is not simply art or design, it is not simply economics or production, and it is not simply capitalism. Huge swathes of reality as we know it have been structured by the demands of fashion, from how raw materials are harvested and developed, how all these materials circulate, to how this circulation and acquisition is financed; this is a world that has been fashioned — even Marx himself, in his critique of the world, could not get away from yards of linen and coats. As a potential “object of critique”, little holds a candle to fashion’s flame; there is little that is more worthy of thinking about critically, and yet, it is a subject that has been rendered invisible by theory and philosophy. 

Meltdown Your Books, anonymous author extraordinaire of Where Does A Body Begin? returns with another question. It is a book that unravels from a specific claim: you cannot escape participating in fashion, and even the way that your most unstylish co-worker dresses is a part of the fashion ecosystem. There is no such thing as existing outside of fashion, you cannot signify nothing. So regardless of whether you want to or not, regardless of whether you intend it or not, fashion is the first thing we think about every day, the first decision to be made. Fashion contains the world, the good, the bad, the ugly, and — this cannot be stated enough — the beautiful.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
"Meltdown Your Books (M.Y.B.) is the pen name of an anonymous scientist and philosopher from the United States. The name is a portmanteau of the seminal essay Meltdown by Nick Land, and the landmark film Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets by Shuji Terayama, a mash-up that was chosen to reflect the political and digital black hole hovering at the edge of contemporary media experience. Through the anonymity of their pen name, their work is presented without the muddy veneer of personal identity, and given as a work on its own terms. This anonymity is not absolute, as some dedicated readers have, through assembling the million little breadcrumbs left throughout their work, found their true identity. Instead its anonymous character existed primarily as an element of presentation. Its anonymity existed to emphasize its deindividuated character. The things discussed and emphasized under the M.Y.B. label are not items with definitive characteristics, they are collective experiences."

DETAILS:
Author: Meltdown Your Books (M.Y.B.)
Editor: Nicholas E. Powers
Illustrations: Rachel Lilim
Layout & Design: Becoming

Edition: 2^nd
Date: 2026

Cat^NO: (Becoming)012B
ISBN: 978-9925-647-40-8 (Print)
Language: English

Format: Softcover
Binding: Sewn Binding
Dimensions: 12cm x 19cm
Pages: 248

To be cited as:
Meltdown Your Books (2026) Will We Be Beautiful? Fashion, Clothes & People in Contemporary Capitalism. Berlin/Nicosia: Becoming.