Items23The creator’s order
  1. 1The Chiffon Trenches (2020)The Chiffon Trenches (2020) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2020André Leon Talley's account of decades at Vogue, from learning the ropes under Diana Vreeland to his long, tumultuous working relationship with Anna Wintour. The voice is conversational and unguarded, swinging between serious reflection and saucy anecdotes about the famous. Read it for the gossip…0
  2. 2Grace (2012)Grace (2012)Published Jan 1, 2012Grace Coddington's memoir runs from a childhood in Wales and a modeling career interrupted by a disfiguring car accident to styling at British Vogue, a spell at Calvin Klein and decades at American Vogue under Anna Wintour. Her tone is blunt, which is the pleasure of it: she admits envy, says what…0
  3. 3D.V (1984)D.V (1984)Published Jan 1, 1984Diana Vreeland's memoir reads like an evening spent listening to her talk, because that is close to how it was made: it is largely her own spoken words, recorded and then shaped by her editors, George Plimpton and Christopher Hemphill. It opens with her announcing that she loathes nostalgia, then…0
  4. 4Visible Man (2022)Visible Man (2022) 10.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2022Edward Enninful was born in Ghana in 1972, the son of a military officer and a dressmaker, and his family moved to London in 1981 after a coup. A modeling job for i-D led to styling, and eventually to becoming the first Black editor-in-chief of British Vogue. The most moving thread is personal:…0
  5. 5Fashion Climbing (2018)Fashion Climbing (2018)Published Jan 1, 2018Most readers know Bill Cunningham as the New York street photographer. This memoir, published after his death in 2016, is about the young man who came first: a Catholic boy from the Boston suburbs who moved to New York in his late teens, made hats for the city's elite and opened his own store. It…0
  6. 6Anna (2022)Anna (2022)Published Jan 1, 2022Amy Odell built this portrait of Anna Wintour from more than 250 sources who spoke on the record, plus earlier interviews and memoirs. Wintour gave the project her blessing but declined to be interviewed herself. That shows: the book is strong on how she runs Vogue and Condé Nast, and on the…0
  7. 7Gods and Kings (2015)Gods and Kings (2015)Published Jan 1, 2015Dana Thomas tells two lives side by side: Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, both from modest London-area backgrounds, both trained at Central Saint Martins. Galliano rises to the top job at Dior; the story ends with McQueen's suicide in 2010 and Galliano's long exile after an anti-Semitic rant…0
  8. 8Alexander Mcqueen (2015)Alexander Mcqueen (2015)Published Jan 1, 2015Where Gods and Kings sets McQueen against Galliano, Andrew Wilson stays with McQueen alone, from his birth in southeast London in 1969 as the youngest of six children to his death in his Mayfair apartment in 2010. Wilson gives the story the shape of a fable: the shy working-class boy who became…0
  9. 9The Beautiful Fall (2006)The Beautiful Fall (2006)Published Jan 1, 2006Alicia Drake's double portrait of Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent in 1970s Paris, when the two designers and their circles split the city into rival camps. Drake built it from interviews with dozens of the designers' friends and colleagues, and it shows in the detail of the parties, feuds and…0
  10. 10Paradise Now (2023)Paradise Now (2023) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2023William Middleton knew Karl Lagerfeld personally and draws on that relationship for a full life of the designer, taking readers behind the catwalk and into four decades of fashion's inner circle. The access is the strength and the limit: it is detailed and entertaining, but it is still the view of…0