Conville & Walsh

In this riveting memoir reminiscent of Super Size Me, the young journalist and fashion insider Neil Boorman charts a very personal journey towards his date with destiny. What are brands? What do they say about our identity? Can we live without them? In an effort to understand the wider context of how brands have dominated every waking hour and led him to make a number of vital life choices, Boorman embarks on a programme of extensive research, experiment and analysis to come to grips with how brands influence our lives. Last October, in a bid to purge himself of brands, Neil publically burnt every one of his branded possessions, revealing how brands ‘brand’, the means by which they have become so powerful and why, like it or not, we are all ‘branded’ individuals.

Whether Neil can live without brands, or indeed whether any of us, his audience, can begin to contemplate it, remains to be seen. But in the post No Logo world where Nike, to name but one, has seen its profits soar from $9.5 billion to $13.5 billion in the last five years, BONFIRE OF THE BRANDS is both a fascinating personal journey and a remarkable and timely social document.