In Junk Style Melanie Molesworth would have us master, over the course of one exquisitely photographed book, the hundreds-of-years-in-the-making French art of rubbish chic. "A house filled with junk furniture," she confidently predicts, "Will have a wonderfully timeless feel". Still, one is left to wonder--is timelessness so wonderful? Is it really so liberating "to forget how much or how little something costs"? Buy all your clothes at Gap and while you'll earn no points for originality or thrift, at least you won't get laughed off the number 12 bus. Junk Style is the interior's equivalent of Vivienne Westwood extolling the sartorial advantages of bondage rubber and bin-bags; only for the brave.

Then again, this is Junk Style's value: It is a window on a real lifestyle, requiring real skill, a good eye, and resilience enough to admit mistakes. "It's a fine balance between being the first to pick a bargain and being the fool who goes home to live with a dud." This is an unworthy sentiment: Surely the whole point of junk style--championed throughout this book and captured in every one of Tom Leighton's covetable fetishistic photographs--is that any mistakes, being cheap, can be rectified, and one's personal taste--no longer in thrall to designer hype and designer prices--is free to develop and grow.

Feel the fear and raid the boot-sale anyway. --Simon Ings