Ever since I was a child, growing up in Gloucestershire, England, I have been passionate about fashion and made and designed my own clothes. I originally wanted to be a fashion designer but feared my drawing wasn’t good enough so studied journalism at the London College of Fashion and went to work for Condé Nast Publications. I later became a newspaper journalist but my love of fashion never went away - I did a millinery course with designer Edwina Ibbotson and a bag designing course at my alma mater. Since then, I have written many articles on fashion and the Royals as well as a number of books.
After the death of Lee Alexander McQueen in 2010, I was fortunate to meet his sister Janet and do an interview with her for the Mail on Sunday.
I was later invited to the launch of the V&A’s exhibition Savage Beauty alongside Lee’s brothers and sisters. This book reminds me of Lee’s extraordinary talent and a very special evening.
Celebrating the astounding creativity and originality of designer Alexander McQueen, who relentlessly questioned and confronted the requisites of fashion
"An authoritative and moving insight into the legacy of the British designer."-Carola Long, Financial Times
"McQueen's brilliance is celebrated in this sumptuous tome."-Harper's Bazaar
"Excellent."-Huffington Post
Arguably the most influential, imaginative, and provocative designer of his generation, Alexander McQueen both challenged and expanded fashion conventions to express ideas about race, class, sexuality, religion, and the environment. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty examines the full breadth of the designer's career, from the start of his fledgling label to the triumphs of his own…
Ever since I was a child, growing up in Gloucestershire, England, I have been passionate about fashion and made and designed my own clothes. I originally wanted to be a fashion designer but feared my drawing wasn’t good enough so studied journalism at the London College of Fashion and went to work for Condé Nast Publications. I later became a newspaper journalist but my love of fashion never went away - I did a millinery course with designer Edwina Ibbotson and a bag designing course at my alma mater. Since then, I have written many articles on fashion and the Royals as well as a number of books.
Being a Francophile, no book list would be complete without the House of Chanel, which is as renowned for its camellias as it is for its little black dresses and tweed suits.
Every page of this book, which has two achingly beautiful black and white camellias on the cover, is stunning and totally inspirational.
Chanel's combination of tradition, originality and style has always made it the most seductive of brands. Here the House of Chanel opens its private archives, revealing a galaxy of brilliant designs created by Coco Chanel from the 1920s onwards, and now reinterpreted to become the motifs for brand new garments, accessories and beauty products.
Inspired by the House's signature fragrance, the legendary 'Chanel No 5', the book explores five central themes - the suit, the camellia, jewelry, fragrances and make-up, and the little black dress - and follows the threads from past to present to show how these key items…
Like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, I am a ladies’ swimwear sales exec. I love solving puzzles, asking a lot of questions, and am naturally curious (some narrow-minded people say I am nosy…go figure…LOL). So, writing mysteries set in the fashion industry was the natural next step for me to take. From the beginning of my career, I have kept a daily journal chronicling the interesting, quirky, and sometimes quite challenging people I have encountered as well as the crazy situations I’ve gotten myself into and out of. My daily journal entries are the foundation of everything I write.
Because I never stop asking what if, I am drawn to cozy mysteries with a plot that weaves a ribbon of fantasy through the stories. I love the added dimension of an inexplicable “presence” when Harlow Jane Cassidy leaves a successful Manhattan fashion design career and opens a dressmaking boutique in the turn-of-the-century Texas farmhouse she inherits from her grandmother.
When her great-grandmother passes away, Harlow Jane Cassidy leaves her job as a Manhattan fashion designer and moves back to Bliss, Texas. But when she opens a dressmaking boutique in the turn-of-the-century farmhouse she inherited, Harlow senses an inexplicable "presence". Is Meemaw really gone, or she now Harlow's ghostly roommate?
Her old friend Josie orders a gown for her upcoming wedding, but when Josie's boss turns up dead, Harlow has to find the killer-with a little help from beyond.
My passion is writing. I started writing when I was 10 years old and my passion was reignited by my 11-year-old son. Writing runs in my blood as my late father was a journalist and the first black editor of the Zambia Daily Mail and my late brother was a poet. To date, I have published 17 children's books. I love writing children’s books with a positive message and also to make them laugh and entertained.
This is a lovely book with beautiful illustrations. Kids will learn that nothing is impossible as long as their parents are there to encourage them. It really hit home as I am a father and have 3 kids, my son has a dream of becoming a professional soccer player, my firstborn daughter has a dream of becoming a renowned fashion designer and my 2nd born daughter wants to be a world-famous make-up artist. I encourage them all the way and this book just drives that point further.
Royal, A Divine Design…Dream your Dreams and Push Through is about a boy who experiences challenges in the form of criticism, rejection, and physical limitations that should’ve caused him to quit on life. Instead, he determines in his heart that he will embrace his uniqueness and dream to inspire others. Through his journey, he understands that he is special and that all things are possible if you believe. His determination, courage, and hope will inspire you to not only embrace your own uniqueness, but the uniqueness of others. So, no matter what challenges you face, you can Dream your Dreams…
As a failed fashion designer, the history of twentieth-century fashion, represented both visually and in the form of narrative text, make up the bulk of my ever-increasing library of fashion books. In order to write about fashion, either as a biographer of one of the great designers or cutting-edge photographers, it is crucial to acknowledge what was deemed as desirable in a previous generation and a previous context. As Yves Saint Laurent famously said, "Fashion fades, Style is eternal." Fashion in its broader sense has never existed in a vacuum and an understanding of fashion history and fashion imagery, that so clearly evokes a specific era, is the very best way to appreciate the cyclical nature of this creative business.
Meticulously researched by brilliant fashion journalist Alicia Drake, this book charts the bitchy, high octane rivalry of two mega egos of the industry, Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. As a journalist working today in an era of horrendous consumerism known as ‘fast fashion’ this detailed account of how both men were instrumental in shifting the established codes of a refined haute couture system into a faster-paced ready-to-wear market in the 1970s is illuminating. It also documents the evolution of couturier as a celebrity, detailing how YSL used an image of himself to promote his aftershave in 1971, a revolutionary idea of self-promotion at the time, and now a very necessary part of the ‘selfie’ obsessed generation of creatives working in fashion.
In 1950s Paris, Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld were friends, the rising stars of the fashion world. But by the late sixties, the city was invaded by a new mood of liberation and hedonism, and dominated by intrigue, infidelities, addiction and parties. Each designer created his own mesmerizing world, so vivid and seductive that people were drawn to the power, charisma and fame, and it was to make them bitter rivals. "The Beautiful Fall" is a dazzling expose of an era and the story of the two men who were its essence and who remain its most singular survivors.
I’m an author of Young Adult Fantasy fiction. When my oldest was six, I started reading Harry Potter to him. It was such a bonding experience that we both cherish. We still talk about the stories, even though he's all grown up and lives away from me most of the time. The thing about fantasy is that stories set in worlds or with people that don’t actually exist make it easier for us to swallow deep meanings, storylines with which we can identify, and that crawl deep down into our souls and nest there. It’s not just about escaping into a fantasy world, but about finding human experience in otherworldly situations and characters.
Have you ever met someone for the first time, and felt like you’d known them forever? I have. On multiple occasions. Not just love interests, but friends, mentors, and others who have come and gone from my life at times when they were most needed. This particular story struck me hard as something I can identify with in this way, as it explores that phenomenon, and takes it one step farther toward the possibility of reincarnation, and the idea that we all have a single soulmate who we are meant to meet in every lifetime. I loved this idea, and it was well done enough to—again—still stick in my memory years later.
Haven Moore can't control her visions of a past with a boy called Ethan and a life in New York that ended in fiery tragedy. In our present, she designs beautiful dresses for her classmates with her best friend Beau. Dressmaking keeps her sane, since she lives with her widowed and heartbroken mother in her tyrannical grandmother's house in Snope City, a tiny town in Tennessee. Then an impossible group of coincidences conspire to force her to flee to New York, to discover who she is, and who she was.
In New York, Haven meets Iain Morrow and is swept…
As a teacher of US women’s history and educational history, I have long been interested in women’s colleges—in their faculties, administrators, students, alumnae, goals, and achievements. Most recently, as the biographer of a woman educator (a dean of Barnard College in the early 20th century), I became more deeply involved with the literature on single-sex schools. Major books focus on the older women’s colleges, the “Seven Sisters,” but devote attention to other colleges as well. I am impressed with the talents of historians, with their skill at asking questions of their subjects, with the intensity of mission at the women’s schools, and with changing styles of campus culture.
A landmark in fashion history, this riveting book captures the way that generations of young women shaped campus style at elite women’s colleges, the significance of clothes among women collegians, and the impact that women college students had on style in general. Photos and text suggest the semiotics of saddle shoes and Shetland sweaters, of blazers and Bermuda shorts. Clothes on campus, the book reveals, embody status and aspiration. Cool and savvy, college women steadily affected trends in the fashion industry.
Elite and prestigious, the Seven Sisters Style is synonymous with a collective sheen of exclusivity, intelligence, and a way of dressing that would become a marker of national pride and status all over the world. From jeans and baggy shirts, bermuda shorts to blazers, soft Shetland sweaters to saddle shoes, not to mention sleek suiting, pearls, elegant suitcases and kidskin gloves for weekend trips to neighboring Ivies and crinolines, kitten heels and cashmere for parties and dances, the women of the Seven Sisters perfected a flair that spoke to a splendidly aspirational lifestyle, filled with travel and excitement. Recently, it…
There are days when it seems like all I do is imagine what the future holds. I love reading “wonder tales,” as I’ve heard Margaret Atwood call them – novels that imagine how our world might change or fantasize about completely different realms. At the same time, they reflect on conditions in our world today. That’s what I do with my own creative writing. I was trained to think about the future as a journalist, talking with media executives about how their content and technology are evolving. My stories have appeared in Asimov's; they’ve been selected by the Writers Lab for Women; and my novel The Juice was published in February.
This novel represents a sharp turn for me. Until I snapped up Zero History in an airport bookstore many years ago, the science fiction I’d read seemed like dry, intellectual exercises. The characters didn’t have depth. They never made me laugh (or cry). But Zero History unleashed a passion in me for speculative fiction, and eventually, it turned my own writing in that direction as well. To this day, it’s one of my all-time favorite novels. While it’s the third book in a William Gibson trilogy, it is entirely complete on its own. There’s a pop culture, cool vibe about it as the story taps into the lives of three people with unusual gifts – which a global marketing magnate dearly wants to use in various ways.
THE THIRD NOVEL IN THE BLUE ANT TRILIOGY - READ PATTERN RECOGNITION AND SPOOK COUNTRY FOR MORE
Hubertus Bigend, the Machiavellian head of global ad-agency Blue Ant, wants to uncover the maker of an obscurely fashionable denim that is taking subculture by storm. Ex-musician Henry Hollis knows nothing about fashion, but Bigend decides she is the woman for the job anyway.
Soon, though, it becomes clear that Bigend's interest in underground labels might have sinister applications. Powerful parties, who'll do anything to get what they want, are showing their hand. And Hollis is…
I’m a law professor and the son of a very well-dressed man. My father was a university Dean, a community organizer, a Presbyterian minister, and a social worker. But he also trained as a tailor and knew clothing—both how it is (or should be) constructed and also how it communicates. I became interested in the importance of clothing because of his influence. Then, in law, I noticed a lot of disputes that involved clothing: high school dress codes, workplace dress codes, dress codes used on public transportation. I wanted bring these two together to give a better idea of why we still fight and struggle over clothing.
I’ve long felt more powerful, confident, and chic wearing a well-cut suit. But why? Sex and Suits expressed and explained my own vague intuitions about the power of significance of clothing. Hollander explains that the suit is perhaps the most ubiquitous symbol of modernity. Discussing the evolution of fashion—particularly men’s fashion—she shows how the suit is both a practical, streamlined, and unassuming garment and the ultimate status symbol.
Since the dawn of western fashion in the Middle Ages, women's dress has never stopped evolving, yet menswear has seen far fewer style revolutions. At the centre of the male wardrobe is the suit: relatively unchanged since the 17th century, its cut and cloth suggest athleticism, seriousness, sexuality and strength - qualities which contrasted with the perceived superficiality and frivolity of female dress, and eventually led to the adoption of the suit into the female wardrobe where it remains to this day.
In Sex and Suits brilliant essayist and art critic Anne Hollander charts the development of men's and women's…
As a professional organizer since 1999, I’ve realized that the problem isn’t so much that we are disorganized, but that we are out-matched. We have too much stuff, it is too cheap and we are too busy and we can’t keep up. If you really want to stay organized, you have to examine your relationship to stuff. Why we want what we want and buy what we buy. Less but better!
Przybryszewski,
a history professor at Notre Dame, had me from the start where she says she’s
probably the only person to have spoken to the Supreme court wearing a ’suit
that won a blue ribbon at a country fair.” Taking American fashion back to the
Home Economics taught at Land Grant Universities and subsequently, at high schools, Przybryszewski argues that knowing how to sew was not just a
practical skill, but also made us better consumers.
Making our own clothes
might have seemed like drudgery, but it was empowering and now that most of us
don’t have those skills, we’re literally slaves to fashion… we can’t tell
high-quality from low quality, we can’t put in pockets when we need them… and
nothing, nothing is ever our exact size. This is a book that will make you want
to learn to make your own clothes… or at least cast a far…
As a glance down any street in America quickly reveals, American women have forgotten how to dress. We chase fads, choose inappropriate materials and unattractive cuts, and waste energy tottering in heels when we could be moving gracefully. Quite simply, we lack the fashion know-how we need to dress professionally and flatteringly.As historian and expert dressmaker Linda Przybyszewski reveals in The Lost Art of Dress , it wasn't always like this. In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable group of women,the so-called Dress Doctors,taught American women how to stretch each yard of fabric and dress well on…
