Recently on Episode 034 The Manic Metallic Podcast, our host (and Manic Metallic founder) Liberty Imhoff discussed why reading and writing both still matter in the fashion industry. (If you’d like to listen to this episode in full, you can either listen to it on the “Podcast” page of our website or hear it wherever you get your podcasts)
In this era of seeming dominance by social media platforms (though that may begin to decline soon, at least in part; see Episode 036 of our podcast for more on that), literature and words still matter. Nothing can tell a story and get deep into a topic quite like a book can. So with that in mind, we’ve got ten fashion book recommendations for you to check out. Some are more famous than others, but all are of high quality. Here they are, in no particular order:
Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano
Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano by fashion journalist Dana Thomas tells the story of the rise of rebellious designers Alexander McQueen and John Galliano and their ultimate respective crashes.
Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes
Fashion journalist Dana Thomas’s work Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes paints a devastating picture of the harmful environmental and social costs brought about by the fashion industry and strongly exacerbated by the rise of fast fashion. Thomas also offers multiple potential solutions to the sutainability crisis.
The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into the Spotlight and Made History
Written by Robin Givhan, the only fashion journalist to ever win the Pulitzer Prize, The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into the Spotlight and Made History goes into fascinating detail about the now-legendary international fashion show held at the Palace of Versailles on November 28, 1973. The so-called “Battle of Versailles” pitted top American designers vs. top French designers; you’ll have to read the book to find out who came out on top and why.
The Price of Illusion: A Memoir
In The Price of Illusion: A Memoir, former Vogue Paris editor-in-chief Joan Juliet Buck tells the story of her whirlwind glamorous life that has taken her to London, New York, Los Angeles, and Paris over the course of her fashion career (she now lives a quiet life in Rhinebeck, NY – a quaint town located in New York’s Hudson Valley). Buck was the first American woman ever hired to edit Vogue Paris.
Fashion Climbing: A Memoir with Photographs
Beloved photographer and milliner Bill Cunningham held off on having this memoir released during his lifetime. That said, Fashion Climbing: A Memoir with Photographs is a gem that tells the story of how this fashion-loving child from an Irish suburb of Boston made his way to New York after dropping out of Harvard to pursue his ultimately successful fashion dreams.
Anna: The Biography
The New York Times bestseller ANNA: The Biography is fashion journalist Amy Odell’s second book. It pulls from resources vetted by Dame Anna Wintour, though Wintour herself declined to contribute to the writing of Odell’s worthy biography. To read more on our thoughts on ANNA, read our review by clicking here.
Champagne Supernovas: Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and the ’90s Renegades Who Remade Fashion
In Champagne Supernovas: Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and the ’90s Renegades Who Remade Fashion, journalist Maureen Callahan takes us on a journey through the 1990s fashion world via the stories of three of the decade’s most compelling fashion stars: supermodel Kate Moss, designer Marc Jacobs, and designer Alexander McQueen. This book, though it speaks of both the highs and lows of each of these three, gives a good glimpse of why many became entranced by the fashion industry.
The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir
The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir was former Vogue editor André Leon Talley’s second memoir and his final work before passing away in January 2022. It tells the story of his fascinating fashion career and his friendships & clashes with the figures in the industry. It also details his personal struggles, giving a sense of humanity to someone often described as being larger than life. Talley is so much more than his friendship with Anna Wintour, and his memoir does a wonderful job at laying that out for everyone to see.
The Vanity Fair Diaries: Power, Wealth, Celebrity, and Dreams: My Years at the Magazine That Defined a Decade
Former Vanity Fair and The New Yorker editor-in-chief Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries: Power, Wealth, Celebrity, and Dreams: My Years at the Magazine That Defined a Decade is a compilation of the diaries that she frequently kept during her Vanity Fair era. To read this book is to get not only an insider’s look at one of the crown jewels of Condé Nast, it gives an intimate look at the woman that brought Vanity Fair back from the brink of destruction.
The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed The Clothing Business Forever
The End of Fashion: The Mass Marketing of the Clothing Business Forever author Teri Agins uses her book to demonstrate how fashion is moving in the direction of marketing dominance as opposed to being driven primarily by creative impulses. She uses specific instances with designers such as Donna Karan and Issac Mizrahi to show how different business and financial aspects are driving this industry-wide change.
(Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, Manic Metallic will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.)
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