clothing is a more direct extension of the outer surface of the 
body. Today Europeans have begun to dress for the eye, 
American-style, just at the moment when Americans have 
begun to abandon their traditional visual style. The media 
analyst knows why these opposite styles suddenly transfer 
their locations. The European, since the Second War, has begun 
to stress visual values; his economy, not coincidentally, now 
supports a large amount of uniform consumer goods. 
Americans, on the other hand, have begun to rebel against 
uniform consumer values for the first time. In cars, in clothes, 
in paperback books; in beards, babies, and beehive hairdos, the 
American has declared for stress on touch, on participation, 
involvement, and sculptural values. America, once the land of 
an abstractly visual order, is profoundly “in touch” again with 
European traditions of food and life and art. What was an 
avant- garde  program for the 1920 expatriates is now the