Fashion Biography

In February 2011 John Galliano, the lauded head of Christian Dior, imploded with a drunken, anti-Semitic public tirade. Exactly a year earlier, celebrated designer Alexander McQueen took his own life three weeks before his women's wear show. Both were casualties of the war between art and commerce that has raged within fashion for the last two decades.

Miss Harriet Peabody dreams of the day she can open up a shop selling refashioned gowns to independent working women like herself. Unfortunately, when an errand for her millinery shop job goes sadly awry due to a difficult customer, she finds herself out of an income. Mr. Oliver Addleshaw is on the verge of his biggest business deal yet, when he learns his potential partner prefers to deal with men who are settled down and wed.

From grinding as an unpaid intern, to becoming a glitzy (but overworked) fashion editor, Christian Allaire writes with feeling about the struggle to find his place—and community—in the highly exclusive world of fashion. And he recounts, with great candour, the difficulty of balancing his ambitions with the often-inaccurate perceptions—including his own—of his culture’s place in the realm of fashion. Full of joy, honesty, adversity, and great clothes, From the Rez to the Runway is a gripping memoir about how to achieve your dreams—and elevate others—while always remaining true to yourself.

In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes. Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages. Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years.

An illuminating guide to a career as a fashion designer written by editor in chief of Teen Vogue Lindsay Peoples Wagner, based on the real-life experiences of three emerging designers - essential listening for someone considering a path to this competitive profession.

Beautiful. Willful. Charming. Blunt. Grace Coddington’s extraordinary talent and fierce dedication to her work as creative director of Vogue have made her an international icon. Known through much of her career only to those behind the scenes, she might have remained fashion’s best-kept secret were it not for The September Issue, the acclaimed 2009 documentary that turned publicity-averse Grace into a sudden, reluctant celebrity. Grace’s palpable engagement with her work brought a rare insight into the passion that produces many of the magazine’s most memorable shoots.

Follow Ruth through a rip-roaring, hilarious decade of not quite making it as a supermodel. Fueled by little more than cigarettes and the stress of her spiraling debt she crisscrosses the world in pursuit of fame and fortune. But how far is she willing to go for this wildly unrealistic dream?

The twentieth century American department store: a palace of consumption where every wish could be met under one roof – afternoon tea, a stroll through the latest fashions, a wedding (or funeral) planned. It was a place where women, shopper and shopgirl alike, could stake out a newfound independence. Whether in New York or Chicago or on Main Street, USA, men owned the buildings, but inside, women ruled.

Make It Ours is at once a remarkable biography of a singular creative force and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury. With access to Abloh’s family, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries, and featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from visionary Black designers like Ozwald Boateng to Abloh’s mercurial but critical employer and mentor Kanye West, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man’s rise amid a cultural moment that would upend a century’s worth of ideas about luxury and taste.

In February 2019, the world lost one of its most enduring cultural icons, Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director for the storied House of Chanel for thirty-five years. Larger than life, Lagerfeld was legendary not only for reinventing Chanel; and creating constant fashion excitement at Chloé, Fendi, and his eponymous brand; but also for his vivid personal style, including his signature uniform of dark sunglasses and a powdered white ponytail. And then there was his utter devotion to his cat, Choupette.

Karl Lagerfeld stylized himself into a living logo and a myth of the fashion world. In Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Fashion, journalist Alfons Kaiser, who knew Lagerfeld personally for many years, introduces listeners to the public and private life of the charismatic fashion designer. Kaiser explores the many eras of Lagerfeld’s life: the youthful outsider in the north German flatlands; the urbane genius in Paris; the tireless draftsman; the enthusiastic photographer; the passionate book collector; and the disciplined Prussian workaholic.

Until now, few people have gotten to know the real Gisele, a woman whose private life stands in dramatic contrast to her public image. In Lessons, she reveals for the first time who she really is and what she's learned over the past 37 years to help her live a meaningful life - a journey that takes listeners from a childhood spent barefoot in small-town Brazil, to an internationally successful career, motherhood and marriage to quarterback Tom Brady. A work of great openness and vulnerability, Lessons reveals the inner life of a very public woman.

Elizabeth Arden was a household name on six continents and a millionaire several times over before her death in 1966. Arden counted British royalty and social elites from the overlapping worlds of New York, Hollywood, London, and Paris among her clients. She revolutionized skin care and cosmetics, making it acceptable for all women to embrace glamour and wear makeup—not just actresses and prostitutes. She created a successful international business empire before women gained the vote and at a time when virtually no woman owned or ran a national company.

In Fashionopolis, Thomas sees renewal in a host of developments, including printing 3-D clothes, clean denim processing, smart manufacturing, hyperlocalism, fabric recycling - even lab-grown materials. From small-town makers and Silicon Valley whizzes to such household names as Stella McCartney, Levi’s, and Rent the Runway, Thomas highlights the companies big and small that are leading the crusade.

Coco Chanel was an extraordinary inventor, conjuring up the little black dress, bobbed hair, trousers for women, contemporary chic, bestselling perfumes, and the most successful fashion brand of all time. But she also invented herself, fashioning the myth of her own life with the same dexterity as her couture; and what lies beneath her own glossy surface is darker, more mysterious, and far more intriguing.

Mention the name "Betsey Johnson" and almost every woman from the age of 15 to 75 can rapturously recall a favorite dress or outfit. They may also know her as a renegade single mom who palled around with Edie Sedgwick, Twiggy, and The Velvet Underground, or even as a celebrity contestant on Dancing with the Stars. Betsey will take the listener behind the tutu and delve deeply into what it took to go from a white picket fence childhood in Connecticut to becoming an internationally known force in a tough, competitive business.

The rise and stall—and rise again—of corporate Canada’s least well-known spectacular success Even those who have heard of Prem Watsa and Fairfax Financial probably don’t understand them. The company sprawls across more than 100 countries and is known for its complex finances—so complex...

Aurora James’s life is a great American “success story”—precisely because it looks so different from others we’ve seen. Scouted as a teen model, James struggled with body image and became disenchanted by the industry’s objectification of women and commodification of race. After she’d hit rock bottom, dropping out of high school and being arrested for street racing, she was forced to reshape her life. A slew of fashion-related jobs led James to discover the power of the runway, and she started her own business in a flea market.

In Take Me Home from the Oscars, Schwab tells for the first time her story of living an amazing life in television while suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Schwab recounts with incredible honesty how on the same day she produced and appeared in a major makeover segment for Live with Regis & Kelly in New York and then raced to Chicago to appear on Oprah!, all while balancing medications to ward off the relentless pain that plagued her on-camera and off.

Racial identity, pop culture, and delusions of perfection collide in an eye-opening and refreshingly frank memoir by fashion and beauty insider Danielle Prescod.