I love books and I love fashion so it’s no surprise that I love books about fashion. Especially well written, beautifully illustrated books or books with beautiful photography… and most especially those books that are a bit quirky.
I’m not talking about all books about fashion. I’m not really interested in buying or owning Trinny and Susanna’s latest tome on how to dress your body, or books like Clinton Kelly’s about the top style mistakes women make. I’m sure these books have good style advice, but advice is not really what I’m after. What I want is to be able to experience vicariously the fashion world, or the fashion of an era that I love, through these books.
I bought this memoir by Grace Coddington last year when it was featured in Keep It Chic, a couple of years ago. I love Grace Coddington’s sense of style and have been enjoying her work in Vogue for years. Her memoir of her long tenure in the fashion world is fascinating (she’s over 70 now and she started as a teen-aged model.) The book is not great literature, for while Grace is an inspired fashion editor and a brilliant artist, she’s not a writer. Still, it’s honestly written and fun to read.
I kind of fell in love with Grace Coddington when I watched the documentary The September Issue a few years ago. Apparently Anna Wintour, the famous (or infamous) editor of Vogue hoped the documentary would counter the depiction “of fashion as utterly ridiculous” in the movie The Devil Wears Prada, and instead show that Vogue was “not just a load of airheads spouting rubbish.” I actually liked The September Issue a lot better than The Devil Wears Prada...although I must say that Meryl Streep was brilliant as Miranda Priestly.
Grace is a fascinating look at Coddington’s life inside and outside the fashion world. How the fashion world works, who decides what is “in” and why… the designers, the models, the stylists, the photographers…and how the whole shebang has changed over the years. She doesn’t pull her punches about that: “…because my feeling has always been that people should concentrate on their jobs and not all this fashionable ‘I want to be a celebrity’ shit.” I love that bit.
The illustrations in the book are Grace’s own and depict the events of her life with wry humour. I actually haven’t finished the book yet. I dip into it every now and then; sitting in my sun room with a cup of tea at my elbow, I open it where I left off last time and step into Grace’s world.
Another favourite fashion book is a kind of advice/how- to book. Well, actually it’s two books. Let me explain. And try to stay with me; this gets complicated.
A few years ago, writer Kathleen Tessaro “stumbled across an extraordinary book in a secondhand bookshop entitled A Guide to Elegance by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux,” or so she says in the forward of her own novel by the same name. Madame Dariaux’s book is an alphabetically organized “Guide to Elegance,” everything from A is for “Accessories” to Z is for “Zippers.”
So, Tessaro finds this book called A Guide to Elegance from the 60’s, written by the long time “directrice” at Nina Ricci in Paris, … uses it as the inspiration for her own novel called Elegance… in which Louise, her hapless character, also finds a copy of the book called A Guide to Elegance … and uses its wisdom to help get her life back on track.
Anyhoo… I read and loved the Tessaro novel. And then I was delighted one day to find, at my local bookstore, the reissued, original, non-fiction book A Guide to Elegance from the 60’s.
I loved thumbing my way through this, taking the advice in the spirit of the age in which it was originally delivered. Mme. Dariaux weighs in on the definition of chic and how to acquire it, the ideal winter wardrobe and the need for tweed suits and “harmonizing sweaters,” the necessity of owning a matching dressing gown and bedroom slippers, the desirability of the “ideal accessory”- a single strand pearl necklace, and when and how a woman should wear a veil.
So many rules. Sigh. How simple dressing must have been then.
I can’t remember where I first heard about Linda Grant’s book The Thoughtful Dresser. But, trust me, if you love fashion, you must read this book. The subtitle reads “The Art of Adornment, the Pleasures of Shopping and Why Clothes Matter.” Ahhhh. This is the book for me.
Grant really does explore the question of “why clothes matter.” And she does it beautifully, with evocative description, personal anecdotes, and wonderfully insightful analysis. I mean, she is after all an award winning author; she won the Orange Prize and the Lettre Ulysses Award; she was shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize.
Seriously folks…if Linda Grant loves clothes…who are we to look down on other women as shallow if they love fashion??! Not that I do look down on.. them…er …I mean, me.
Grant’s book begins with her description of a red high-heeled shoe, “Glorious, scarlet, insouciant,” and follows with her musings on who the woman might have been who owned that shoe, loved it and wore it on that last day.
You see the shoe is one of a huge pile of other shoes, an exhibit in the museum at Auschwitz, near Krakow in Poland. Grant writes, “The pile of shoes is designed to be symbolic, representing the footwear of twenty-five thousand individuals from one day’s activity at the camp, at the height of the gassings.” That red shoe haunted Grant because, as she says, “someone arrived at Auschwitz wearing, or carrying in her luggage, red high-heeled shoes, and this shoe is all that is left of her.” That unnamed woman once had a life, a family, freedom, and “once upon a time, she liked to shop for stylish footwear.”
The book continues with anecdotes from Grant’s own life and the life of her mother, whose phrase “A good handbag makes the outfit,” Grant says, “had etched itself on [her]childhood.”
She talks about how clothes matter to those erudite and brilliant women we book-lovers revere; women like Edith Warton and George Eliot and Virginia Woolfe. And erudite and brilliant men like Marcel Proust and Emile Zola, who she says “wrote about clothes and cared about clothes.”
That’s right, Emile Zola thought clothes and shopping were important. He “saw the modern department store as a metaphor for modern life.” Remember the television series of a year or so ago The Paradise? It was based on Zola’s novel The Ladies Paradise.
Some of the best parts of The Thoughtful Dresser, in my view, are when Grant gets a little hot under the collar at those people she calls “the puritan moralists who affect to despise fashion and those who love it. Who shrilly proclaim that only vain, foolish Barbie dolls, their brains addled by consumerism, would wear anything but sensible clothes made to last.”
Strong words, Ms. Grant. Yah! Take that you…you ‘puritan moralists!’ God, I love this woman!
I remember when I was reading this book for the first time…I kept taking it to work and reading the best bits aloud to my friends over lunch. It seemed to me as if Linda Grant had awakened one morning and said to herself…”I think I’ll write a book for Sue Burpee.”
Or for anyone who loves literature and fashion in equal parts.
And the best thing about reading this book is that it made me realize how many more of me there are out there!
What non-fiction books are you passionate about? Care to tell the rest of us?
P.S. The book links in this post are affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking my link I will earn a small commission which helps to pay for the blog.
16 thoughts on “A Passion for Books About Fashion”
I have a couple of these books including the book "Grace, A Memoir." I put this book away in early 2013 after reading about 100 pages. As I remember, I became very bored with it but you have my curiosity up again. Have just pulled it off the shelf and will give it another try.
Well, it's not the most gripping book I've ever read. But I love how it gives a view into the fashion world. And I just really like Grace Coddington and her work.
Thanks for reading.
It is so funny, Susan, but just today I was looking for new fashion and style reads. Thanks for the list. I am going to look some of these up. I really want to find the documentary as well…I would like to see it.
I loved "The September Issue" and I think you will too. But you have to read "The Thoughtful Dresser" ..best book about fashion ever!
Oh my gosh – hold me back! I LOVE non-fiction fashion and style books, I have a whole bookshelf of them. When my kids were in the later elementary years, and I started to feel the urge to claw my way out of the mummy trenches, I came across a book by the famous hairdresser Frederic Fekkai called A Year of Style. It's almost 20 years old now, but I still like to look through it now and again. It follows the calendar year and has lots of tips for adding a bit of beauty and style to your life. In recent years I've been interested in how to navigate my fifties; I have Forever Chic by Tish Jett and Style Forever, by your good friend Alyson Walsh. Another excellent book for that is What to Wear for the Rest of Your Life, by Kim Johnson Gross (of the Chic Simple books). And for excellent writing about beauty, I turn to Sali Hughes, the Guardian's beauty editor. She has two books out, Pretty Honest and Pretty Iconic – she has the most delicious turn of phrase and I thoroughly enjoy reading her Saturday column too. (I think you would really enjoy her writing, if you don't already know of her.)
Actually, make that 'I have a whole bookcase of them!'
Ha. This post has definitely struck a chord with you, Patricia. I must look for those Sali Hughes books… I have an Indigo gift card burning a hole in my pocket. Thanks for the recommendation.
The Linda Grant book is a favorite of mine & I remember quoting chunks of it to my Hubbie . He doesn't quite understand my love of clothes . Like you , I can't put my hands on it now . It may have gone to the charity shop in one of my culls . I seem to remember that she used to have a blog . Like Patricia I enjoy Sali Hughes's down to earth beauty advice . She would never endorse products just for profit . Hope the wilderness is behaving itself .
Wendy in York
I'm thinking I should buy myself a new copy of the Linda Grant book. Just to have on hand when I start feeling too shallow.
Hope you are having (maybe you're in town for a meal and taking advantage of free wi-fi), or had, good weather and fun, relaxation, good fishing, etc. on your holiday.
I appreciate the practical uses of technology but on the frivolous side, I get such joy from reading book recommendations on my favorite blogs and while I'm still reading, picking up my phone and ordering whatever I can from the library. They didn't have The Thoughtful Dresser but Vintage Fashion is coming to me. I expect to enjoy it so will thank you in advance!
Thanks, Georgia. Hope you enjoy the vintage fashion book.
Interesting reading ideas. I have The Thoughtful Dresser on its way from my library. And I love the concept of the novel. Will also add it to my list.
The rules from the original Elegance book are SO rigid. Definitely makes me want to read it, too. Thanks! And hope you're loving being 'out of touch'.
–Laurel
I think you'll love the Thoughtful Dresser. It's such a wonderful mish mash of thoughts and memories about clothes and fashion.
Great picks… I'm not a very fashionable dresser, but I do love reading about fashion, and love fashion as history and ideas.
I love fashion as history as well. I wish I could have seen that Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit in Brooklyn which used her clothing alongside her artwork.
Reading non-fiction books about fashion is lovely however my very favourite books that would fit into that category are about jewellery…books on the Queen's Jewels follow various owners throughout history. Seeing the same jewelled pieces on different generations is somehow soothing to me….perhaps it is because in this ever-changing world some things remain the same! Elizabeth Taylor and the Duchess of Windsor also had magnificent pieces of jewellery and photographs of Cartier pieces are gorgeous. The design trends in jewellery follows fashion and as a result the two are very closely related and entwined. Love reading your posts…Cheers, Alayne
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