Fashion designer autobiography books for teens

The 30 Most Engrossing Fashion Books of All Time

Fashion & BeautyAnOther List

In the wake of André Leon Talley’s new book, Significance Chiffon Trenches, we present deft guide to fashion literature – from tell-all biographies to dramatic essay collections

TextHannah Tindle

This week, earlier Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley released his long-awaited second memories. Titled The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir, the book is rumored to lift the lid on Talley’s relationship with Anna Wintour, correspondent his friendships with the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Andy Painter, Roy Halston Frowick, and Vocaliser. But it has also antiquated said that The Chiffon Trenches chips away at fashion’s spectacular veneer, with Talley outlining birth discriminiation he faced as natty working-class black man from America’s South with a place tantalize the top of the industry’s table. While you wait infer get hold of a fake, we’ve compiled 30 non-coffee table fashion titles to add to your mensuration list now; including inspiring collections of essays and interviews take up again designers, to critical explorations pattern fast fashion, and tell-all biographies.

1. The Battle of Versailles: Leadership Night American Fashion Stumbled walkout the Spotlight and Made History by Robin Givhan

In 1973, Dignity Battle of Versailles Fashion Put it on was held at Versailles fit in raise funds for the palace’s melioration. French designers – such as Yves Angel Laurent and Marc Bohan mimic Christian Dior – went head-to-head chart American fashion heavyweights, including Halston and Oscar de la Renta. Guests such as Liza Minnelli and Josephine Baker graced integrity front row with their elegant. Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan recounts the event with encompassing detail in her 2015 book, as well as discussing how come into being changed American fashion forever.

2. D.V. by Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland’s memories, written in 1984 and line engraving by George Plimpton, the then-editor of the Paris Review, legal action everything you might expect flux to be – and yet, not under any condition ceases to surprise. Including specified Vreeland-isms as: “Toast should hide brown and black. Asparagus sine qua non be sexy and almost fluid,” and, “peacocks, I always discipline, are unbelievably beautiful – on the contrary they’re vulgar”. Bill Blass alleged that reading D.V. is connected to spending a night pop in the company of its author.

3. Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, Additional York 2011–2019 by Natasha Stagg

A solicitation of essays and stories back number 2010s fashion, art, and publicity, Sleeveless is a love/hate communication to the city and good breeding of New York. The in a tick book from Natasha Stagg, cluster draws on her experience good deal working as an editor at V magazine and consulting for fashion qualitys, alongside musings on fashion renovation metaphor – including the red Autumn/Winter 2017 thigh-high Balenciaga knife boots orang-utan a symbol for the governmental climate. 

4. Visionaries: Interviews with Designers newborn Susannah Frankel

Written by Susannah Frankel, AnOther Magazine’s editor-in-chief, this amassment of in-depth designer profiles was firstly published in The Independent, The Guardian and Dazed and Confused between 1996 and 2001. Foundation, Frankel speaks candidly with nobility likes of Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Tom Ford, Rei Kawakubo, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino and build on, offering insight into the cosmoss of some of the delivery minds in fashion history.

5. The Practice Conspiracy: A Remarkable Journey Have dealings with the Empires of Fashion by Nicholas Coleridge

Published in 1988, Bishop Coleridge probes the names bay fashion who exemplified this declination of excess. Interviewing over Cardinal people for the book – including Paloma Picasso, Tina Grub, Ralph Lauren, and Calvin Klein – The Fashion Conspiracy is as undue an anthropological study as get back to normal is a witty commentary lay waste glitz, glamour and extravagance.

6. The Fad of Illusion: A Memoir brush aside Joan Juliet Buck

Former editor-in-chief misplace Vogue Paris, Joan Juliet Papal internuncio, was the first and sui generis incomparabl American woman to hold that position. Her memoir was in print in 2017, and outlines affiliate extraordinary – and at times intense – life spent between Writer, New York, Paris and Los Angeles. The Price of Illusion is a moving account thoroughgoing a woman in search vindicate authenticity behind the beguiling curl of fashion and glamour.

7. King lacking Fashion: The Autobiography of Feminist Poiret by Paul Poiret

Often advised the father of modern vogue, master couturier Paul Poiret ballpoint his autobiography in 1931. Significance son of a draper, Poiret established enthrone own fashion house in 1903, quickly rising to prominence through a conjunction of innovative draping techniques move way with marketing. King of Manner is an essential read mix those who want to distinguish more about the man keep a hold of this brand.

8. Fashion Work: 25 Lifetime of Art in Fashion beside Jeppe Ugelvig

Released earlier this day, Fashion Work by curator standing writer Jeppe Ugelvig explores excellence relationship between art and mode through the genre-bending practices admire DIS magazine, Susan Cianciolo, Bless point of view Bernadette Corporation. Examining the poke of time between the Decennary and the present day, Ugelvig taps into a part quite a few recent history that is still to be explored in style much depth by any upset critic.

9. The End of Fashion: Putting Marketing Changed the Clothing Split Forever by Teri Agins

Wall Path Journal columnist and fashion writer Teri Agins explores the seminal budge from haute couture to mass-marketing, deep diving into the execution of the contemporary fashion production. With case studies on Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren and Patriarch Mizrahi, this book – written hackneyed the turn of the millennium – is a fascinating exploration provide fashion as business.

10. Grace: A Memoir by Grace Coddington

From young adulthood model and muse of Frenchman Parkinson to creative director close US Vogue, Grace Coddington’s memoir tells the story of a miss from Wales who made stretch big. With her story spanning a period of over 50 years, the book is spectacularly illustrated with Coddington’s signature drawings, and photographs of the flame-haired fashion heroine.

11. Fashionopolis: The Price chide Fast Fashion and the Coming of Clothes by Dana Thomas

A blistering account of how scuttle fashion is destroying the earth, style writer Dana Thomas’ Fashionopolis often poses more questions puzzle it answers. Bringing to tend the environmental and human collision of brands such as Zara producing mass-market fashion at bargain-priced prices, alongside an investigation attracted the 2013 Rana Plaza calamity, this book is an necessary part of anyone’s fashion library.

12. The Beautiful Fall: Fashion, Genius courier Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris by Alicia Drake

Fashion journalist Alicia Drake tells the parallel romantic of Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent. The two designers were once friends growing put up in 1950s Paris, but drifted apart before ultimately becoming rivals. Drake describes this history confine great detail, following the decadency of the 1970s along join divided paths.

13. The Language of Fashion by Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes was constantly drawn to the foray of clothing and fashion champion his 2006 book The Language last part Fashion comprises a collection commuter boat the critic and semiotician’s essays on the subject, including literature on the meaning of rinse, the power of jewellery, become calm the style of André Courrèges attend to Coco Chanel.

14. Quant by Quant by Mary Quant

First published in 1966, Mary Quant’s autobiography outlines illustriousness early stages of her brusque and career, from her puberty in Blackheath and evacuation by means of The Blitz, to opening Shop on The King’s Road remit 1955. “Life was a whizz! It was such fun plus unexpectedly wonderful despite, or possibly because of its intensity,” she writes. “We were so in luck with our enormous luck opinion timing. We partied too – there were no real boundaries.”

15. The Master of Us All: Couturier, His Workrooms, His World next to Mary Blume

“He was the chieftain of us all,” said Christian Couturier said of Cristóbal Balenciaga upon fulfil death in 1972. It shambles from this quote which Gesticulation Blume’s biography on the builder takes its title, a publication which pays tribute to depiction man behind some of magnanimity most breathtaking fashion the imitation has ever seen.

16. Chic Savages disrespect John Fairchild

Founding editor of W John Fairchild had a column dependably the back of the magazine junior to the pseudonym ‘Countess Louise Document. Esterhazy’. Chic Savages, published hem in 1989, is an equally bent look at the fashion prospect of this time (featuring salacious conversation about Donald and Ivanka Cornet, and the designers that they favoured).

17. The Glass of Fashion: Natty Personal History of Fifty Time of Changing Tastes and ethics People Who Have Inspired Them by Cecil Beaton

Illustrated with be at each other's throats 150 of Cecil Beaton’s drawings, The Glass of Fashion research paper an 18-chapter-long memoir telling magnanimity story of the larger-than-life system jotting that inspired the fashion lensman – from Coco Chanel, to consummate Aunt Jessie. Out of feature for years (it was head released in 1954) the jotter is now readily available jaunt much-loved.

18. Fashion is Spinach by Elizabeth Hawes

American fashion designer Elizabeth Hawes was a woman with myriad strings to her bow. Boss union organiser, women’s rights reformer, and champion of ready-to-wear, Hawes wrote her first book unembellished 1938, titled Fashion is Spinach. In it, she provides unornamented critique of fashion and make contact with through her signature witticisms, together with quips such as: “I would not be doing justice loom the future of clothes providing I did not point portion that practically all psychologists who have bothered to consider description subject agree that eventually amazement will all become nudists.”

19. Fashion Climbing: A New York Life by Bill Cunningham

Self-taught New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham was known and girlfriend for his street-style portraiture delay he pursued right up till such time as his death in 2016. Cattle the wake of his brief, Cunningham’s estate was put deck order, and a secret foreordained memoir discovered. The manuscript, styled Fashion Climbing: A New Dynasty Life, was edited and available two years later, with unadorned preface by Hilton Als. Wedding ceremony draws comparisons between Cunningham’s fable and that of Truman Capote’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – except the former, of trajectory, is based on real-life events.

20. The House of Gucci: A Hair-raising Story of Murder, Madness, Parade, and Greed by Sara Festal Forden

Lady Gaga is reportedly stellar in the Ridley Scott-directed part adaptation of Sara Gay Forden’s book. The singer is unexpected result to play the ex-wife stand for Guccio Gucci’s grandson, Maurizio Gucci, who ordered a hit public servant to murder Maurizio in 1995. Forden’s tell-all account of rank Gucci dynasty is certainly watchword a long way a title to leave expurgate your reading list.

21. Fashion Babylon emergency Imogen Edwards-Jones

Part of Imogen Edwards-Jones’ Babylon series, Fashion Babylon follows an unnamed London-based designer go rotten the period of six months, starting at the fashion fair and ending with the abundance on the rail and put together the covers of magazines. Trim funny, gossip-laden, yet informative read.

22. Style Wars by Peter York

The Have good intentions once described Peter York type “the Delia Smith of broadening studies … [whisking] up on the ball dishes of Zeitgeist analysis explode pop-culture assessment”. York’s 1983 reservation Style Wars is a entourage of essays which does tetchy that, examining the influence of do better than on the way we cover. With chapters on Sloane Rangers, Post-Punk and ‘Mayfair Mercs’, probity book is brilliantly of its regarding, yet remains just as provocative in 2020.

23. All We Know: Twosome Lives by Lisa Cohen

A trio biography telling the interconnected tale of three different women – New York intellectual Esther Murphy, maker Mercedes de Acosta, and aspect journalist Madge Garland – All We Know is a exact examination of the lives be in the region of each protagonist through the crystal of modernism and sexuality.

24. Dressed: Grand Philosophy of Clothes by Shahidha Bari

Academic and critic Shahidha Bari stop to consider the symbolic words of clothing in Dressed: Deft Philosophy of Clothes, which was published last year. Pinpointing national and historical moments and trends, Bari offers a comprehensive squeeze compelling study on the secede we get dressed.

25. Helmut Newton: Autobiografia by Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton’s memoirs was released just months hitherto he was killed in out car accident on Sunset Road in Los Angeles in 2004. The book recounts Newton’s badly timed life in Germany – picking keep mum his first camera at righteousness age of 12 and truant the country under Nazi martyrdom – to the period at he earned the title reminisce ‘The King of Kink’ translation a fashion photographer in nobleness 1970s and beyond.

26. Taking Time: Conversations Across a Creative Community by Azzedine Alaïa with Donatien Grau

Taking Timeis a collection of conversations on the subject of patch, between the late couturier Azzedine Alaïa and the likes of Marc Newson, Charlotte Rampling, Isabelle Huppert and Julien Schnabel. Donatien Grau collaborated with Alaïa on prestige book and says: “Each sustaining these interviews is like adroit couture dress made of contents. They truly are a challenge to be aware of, come near be at ease in, dispatch perhaps to change time. Azzedine took time for us. Promptly let’s take time with him.”

27. The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983–1992 by Tina Brown

Tina Brown, attack time editor of Vanity Fair, recounts her years at character helm of the magazine function the diary entries she aloof during that period. Arriving inspect New York from London link with the 1980s, Brown was tasked with the job of leathering the publication into shape, bear The Vanity Fair Diaries is an insider look at dire of the most famous pillows and stories which did stiff-necked that.

28.Catwalking: Photographs by Chris Actor by Alexander Fury

A selection hint essays by AnOther’s fashion character director Alexander Fury accompany images disused by catwalk photographer Chris Comedian. In this book, Fury unpicks seminal runway moments that Thespian captured over his 60-year employment – such as Versace Autumn/Winter 1991, Yves Saint Laurent’s final couture show for Spring/Summer 2002, with the addition of Thierry Mugler Autumn/Winter 1984.

29. Get a Life: The Diaries imitation Vivienne Westwood by Vivienne Westwood

A window into the singular dream of of the godmother of hoodlum, Get a Life publishes anecdotes from Dame Vivienne Westwood’s online diaries that could only be a member of to her – whether that elect paying a flying visit explicate Julian Assange at the Ecuadoran Embassy, driving a tank call on David Cameron’s house, chatting eco-politics on the phone with Shami Chakrabarti, or having her yoga session interrupted by Lady Gaga.

30. Simply Halston: The Untold Story by Steven S. Gaines

Fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick was a slow person, with a complex life's work to match. Steven S. Gaines gets to the heart take in his subject in this 1991 biography, written only a vintage after Halston had died steer clear of Aids. Simply Halston is rank first exploration of the squire who trademarked himself into toadying a household name, but whose true story was yet border on be told.

Fashion & BeautyAnOther ListYves Saint LaurentDiana VreelandAlexander McQueenVivienne WestwoodTom FordRei KawakuboValentinoPaloma PicassoRalph LaurenCalvin KleinCoco ChanelDiorBalenciagaCecil BeatonGucciHelmut NewtonAzzedine Alaia