A brilliant new book explores what the relentless rise of awareness-raising ribbons – kitsch fashion items that express the wearer’s fear of disease or empathy with victims – reveals about our morbid, narcissistic society.

Ribbon Culture is a brilliant little book. Drawing on her doctoral research, Sarah Moore, a research assistant at the University of Kent, provides a cogent analysis of the ubiquitous ‘awareness-raising’ ribbon and its more recent offspring, the wristband. What do these things represent, she asks, and why do so many people wear them? The answers are revealing and disturbing.

“The ribbon ‘appears to signal concern for others, but in fact prioritises self-expression’, says Moore”

“In the Noughties, everyone wants to be counter-cultural – the counter-culture has become the mainstream”

“Ribbon campaigns play off individuals’ residual anxiety about their health, lifestyle and mortality”

Ribbon Culture: Charity, Compassion and Public Awareness, by Sarah E.H. Moore