Three recent books have dropped onto our desks, and each one tells the story of a woman style icon. All three are very enjoyable, but in different ways; consider them for your summer into fall reading list.
Inspirational and Entertaining
Let’s start with the most colorful: Behind the Seams, My Life In Rhinestones by Dolly Parton, (Ten Speed Press, 2023). This coffee table book is part memoir and part fashion trip down memory lane, spanning the long and storied career of this global superstar. There are 450 full color photos of Ms. Parton’s favorite performance clothing and they are really wonderful eye candy.
Rae’s daughter gave her this book for her birthday last year and it was a wonderful stroke of inspiration. Rae says “Whenever I need a jolt of happy clothes, I pick up the book and just look at the photos.”
Inspiring and Empowering
Next we will consider How to be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon, by Lyn Slater (Plume, 2024). This is a very fun, readable memoir with a chapter about each year of Ms. Slater 60s decade. It traces the New Yorker’s reinvention from fashion loving college professor to fashion blogger, to style influencer, to gardening and repurposing Grandmother. She embraces each of these changes with such energy and style, embodying the theory that while you cannot control everything, you can control how you think about your age and the changes that are required to continue to live well and authentically. This book is definitely worth a look and has terrific black and white photos of the style icon’s style evolution.
Interesting and Educational
Finally, the most academic title on the list is Liberty, Equality, Fashion – The Women Who Styled the French Revolution by Anne Higonnet (WWNorton and Company, 2024). While this book is full of factual information, the author draws some rather dramatic conclusions about the three women she has identified as the leading style icons of the revolutionary period in France. You have certainly heard of Josephine Bonaparte, but also consider Terezia Tallien and Juliette Recamier as women who styled a new country with fashions that were less constricting and representative of a new freedom for women.
The book begins with the early years of the French Revolution when these three women landed in Paris, with chaperones of course, in search of a higher social rank and appropriate marriages. Follow along as they each become acquainted, sometimes even rivals on their way to being named style icons. The book is illustrated with fashion plates that follow the period from approximately 1793, the early revolutionary years, through the Napoleonic era that ended in 1814. There are also actual portraits of the women whose stories we are introduced to and how they influenced society as social media does today. What an excellent read for Rae to begin her French Adventure this summer into fall. Her husband, a student of the French Revolution, was the instigator of this historic journey. If you like fashion history, you will love this book. It is engaging and impeccably researched and the story in the conclusion about how she unearthed her resources is a terrific tale all by itself.
Curl up with any and all of these good reads for a dose of fashion and fun! Read some of our other reviews in previous posts filed in the blog archive under Book Reviews.
