Weekend Review: Finding Myself in Fashion

 

Finding Myself in Fashion / Jeanne Beker
TO: Penguin, c2011
230 p.

Canadian readers will recognize this author immediately! Jeanne Beker is an icon in the Canadian fashion scene, as the long-time host of FashionTelevision among many other roles.

This memoir from a decade ago covers 40 years of her work in the tv world -- and this is an interesting mix, because it's about fashion but really more about fashion from the perspective of a journalist than someone on the inside of design house. It sheds another light on this world. 

Jeanne was always energetic and ambitious, and she chronicles her youthful character and escapades that led to her work in theatre (she's a trained mime!), radio, and then eventually tv. She moved into fashion journalism after working in the music field at MTV for a while, and that gritty energy helped her make FashionTelevision into a more interesting show than a simple model host might have. Plus she had all sorts of interesting connections from her earlier work to bring into their show. 

I really enjoyed reading about the work angle of this book -- it was fascinating to see her career trajectory, and how she also lost her job due to ageism -- still happening in the tv world for sure! But she found other fashion focused work to move to. She shared stories of meeting fashion greats like Karl Lagerfeld or Alexander McQueen, and shared how her down-to-earth persistence got her access and built relationships. The story of how she was sent to interview Karl early on, while hugely pregnant, was quite entertaining -- and she got an original Chanel out of it! 

The book also talks a lot about her personal romantic relationships, from the breakdown of her marriage to the many dates and relationships she had after that. I wasn't as interested in this element of the book at all, but these stories do round out the picture of her life and how her work affected all parts of it. 

If you want a look at the fashion world from another angle, and you also fondly remember watching FT and Jeanne Beker, this might interest you too. 

Weekend Review: Behind the Seams

 

I first encountered Esme Young via the Great British Sewing Bee, and had a vague idea that she was a fashion person brought on to the show. I feel some affinity with her as a fellow short person with a similar hairstyle, too ;) 

So when I saw this title I was very interested, and fortunately a friend gave me a copy! I really enjoyed reading this relaxed memoir. It has stories about her life from young girl to present day, but it's not just a chronological progression. It covers various times in more detail; the highlights are her years running Swanky Modes, a design house/storefront with 3 friends -- they were one of the first to use Lycra as a fashion fabric, not just for workout gear -- as well as her work with Central St Martins as a pattern cutter instructor. And of course, there are the years of the Great British Sewing Bee! 

The style is quite relaxed and fun; if you are familiar with her from the Sewing Bee, you'll recognize her 'voice' as it is the same in her writing. She has some great anecdotes from her time in the fashionable crowd in London, especially in the years of Swanky Modes - like meeting David Bowie, or even the small, homely details of how she built relationships with the children of her business partners. I found this different from other fashion memoirs in that she had a different relationship to fashion -- she wasn't a trained designer trying to make it in couture, she was a rather down to earth pattern maker who decided to start a boutique with three of her friends and just had fun with it.  

And sewists will enjoy reading about her pattern work and the way it shaped her career. At Central St Martins she mentored designer Ashish Gupta, and talks about their work together even now -- one of her most memorable outfits on the Bee was a sequined granny square pattern jacket made by Ashish so it all makes sense! I enjoyed this story of a woman who followed her passions and did it all on her own. She talks about work as a key element of her life, and when she was asked to be on the Bee she seemed surprised that she was invited to audition; there was no snobbiness or sense that she was assured anything due to her history or connections. And she seems happy with this new gig - as she says, she wants (and needs) to work until she dies, and this is just one more new experience for her that has brought opportunity. 

This was an enjoyable read. The tone felt very natural and entertaining, and I learned quite a bit about her life, and fashion in England over the past few decades. There's nothing too dark in it, and you get a sense of her habit of just getting on with things. Recommended for any fan of English fashion personalities or the Great British Sewing Bee! 

Weekend Review: Anna: the Biography

 

Anna: the biography / Amy Odell
NY: Gallery Books, c2022
447 p.

I've always been intrigued by Anna Wintour, and since this new biography arrived in my library I thought I'd grab it -- it's an authorized bio, and very lengthy, but not gossipy like earlier unauthorized attempts at writing about Wintour. 

It's quite thorough, beginning with Anna Wintour as a child; it talks about her family beginnings and her parents, explaining how both their personalities and their family backgrounds and careers affected Anna's direction. Unlike her siblings, she was more interested in fashion and journalism than university, and once she found her direction she went for it with precise aim. 

It covers all her early jobs and how they shaped her career in magazines, both by her successes and by those places and roles that she wasn't so successful at. It was interesting to see that here was somebody with a distinct vision and a particular personality, who wasn't too good at all the things that people are supposed to do to "pay their dues", but was superb at the role she wanted and finally got - editor of Vogue. 

She found early on that she didn't like many of the elements of a fashion job; going out on site as the producer of a shoot wasn't for her, and many of the daily grind kind of things weren't either. It was running the show and shaping the vision for the magazine that she wanted and was really good at. This kind of focus on doing what she wanted to be doing was interesting to me - how did she keep on with everything else in the meantime? I guess thinking about it as a step toward the ultimate goal. 

Anyhow, the book does talk about her personal relationships to a degree, and does point out some of the missteps she made at other magazines as well as the one or two big errors at Vogue. But it was written by a fashion insider (Odell is the editor of Cosmopolitan.com) and depends heavily on interviews with friends and family, as well as being okayed by Wintour, so there isn't too deep of a discussion of the various criticisms she's faced over the years. 

Along with the personal, there's quite a bit about the workings of the fashion world in general, and about Condé Nast in particular. A reader finds out a lot about the bosses and the work culture at this magazine consortium, and my lord, you'd have to have a thick skin to make it there. I've noticed that Anna Wintour was not front and centre at every runway show in the past while, and wondered about it, but here I discovered that she is no longer the editor of Vogue but the overall content manager for Condé Nast as a whole -- so now it makes sense. 

If you're also interested in fashion journalism and the history of Vogue magazine, and have a fascination with Anna Wintour like I do, this is a good read. Lots to think about here even if it isn't an "exposé" of anything, but more of a putting on record of Wintour's career overall. I feel like it did a good job of tracing her personality and how it developed and worked for her (and against her) in her chosen field. And it also pointed out how many of those traits were only criticized or examined because she was a powerful woman - many men in the same roles were far worse but never got a comment on their leadership at all. Fascinating read about a huge figure in the fashion world, I enjoyed it. 

Weekend Review: Betsey!

Betsey: a memoir / Betsey Johnson with Mark Vitulano
NY: Viking, c2020
288 p.

And now for a fashion bio of a different sort! This memoir by Betsey Johnson is refreshingly cheerful and straightforward. No vicious catfights or excessive drug use or terrible destruction here. Just a women who made her own version of a fashion career in America.

Of course, when you are telling your own story rather than having a journalist tell it, you are able to gloss over some of the darker stuff, so perhaps there was some in her life. But it's not in this book. That's not to say that Betsey Johnson didn't have some issues -- her worst trait seems to be her terrible taste in men. She is open about her relationships, most of which were pretty bad, one so much so that she refuses to name him, just calling him Husband #3. But that personal information is just a small part of this book; the focus is really on Betsey Johnson the brand. 

I've always liked the wacky style of Betsey Johnson, and one of my most favourite thrift store finds is a Betsey Johnson computer bag, complete with garish rose print and gold zip and tag. It is so her. So I was interested in reading about how she got to be an American success. 

I was actually surprised by some of the biographical information; I don't always know much about designers as people, I'm more interested in their fashion. But Betsey Johnson started as a "good girl",  from a stable family and with boundless energy that led her to dancing early on -- and teaching dancing too, from the age of 14! She was also a cheerleader in high school and in college, definitely not something that the fashion students in her college days understood or appreciated. 

But she was in the right place when she needed to be. She got an intern position at a New York magazine via an essay contest, and made connections there, while sewing up clothes for herself that coworkers began asking for. Her quirky style caught on and she landed in Paraphernelia, with a trendy boutique in a larger store that highlighted individual designers at a time when this was a new concept. She was very successful at making her name there so later went out on her own with a business partner -- ending up with a large franchise and a lot of success, financial and creative. 

But then 30 years somehow passed, and they decided to sell their company and like all takeovers, the money people came in and ruined a good business. Her name was licensed all over the place (hence my thrift store bag) and then she left the company altogether. But the story throughout is fascinating, absolutely not self-pitying at all, gives a great view of female entrepreneurs and how hard it was to get going as two women starting a business, and also paints a portrait of Betsey Johnson the person. 

She feels very extroverted and outer focused to me; maybe because it is so different to my own personality, even reading this was a bit tiring! At some points I wondered about the self-reflection she might have done to understand her terrible relationships and some of her business decisions -- very personal information like that is not included in this narrative. But other personal information, like her fight with breast cancer, is shared, mostly to highlight the work she's done with cancer charities and how important knowledge is for women in this area. 

I enjoyed this light read about a designer I like; even with the lightness there is mention of the sexism she faced over the years, and the disdain of "real" fashion people when she won the Coty Award early on in her career -- since she hadn't gone to fashion school and didn't operate from 7th Avenue, she wasn't considered a "real" designer by many people who had done those things -- again, sexism was a part of that. But she just keeps going and makes a life for herself despite the haters. I found this story much more wholesome than the last few fashion world exposés I've just read and it was a great one to finish off this series of titles with.