Don’t Judge a Cover…
Style Books to Inspire by Friends and Fashion People…
…Although we often do… so these are the Fashion and Style Books I recommend for your Holiday Wish List.
I always love to have a good book on the go… for traveling, for inspiration, for discovering new people and experiences… Here are some of my favorites for gifting, for getting, for adding to your reading list.
I’d love to know what you’ve read and enjoyed – can be fashion or beyond – Comment below and let me know what you recommend?
Elle
Life Lessons and Learning to Trust Yourself
Elle MacPherson
Elle MacPherson and I met in Paris ‘87, backstage at an Alaia show. I’ve always liked her a lot as a person, admired and benevolently envied her as a fellow Supermodel (comes with the territory!) and we’ve remained friends ever since….
Open Elle MacPherson’s new book ‘Elle - Life Lessons and Learning to Trust Yourself’, which she says “is not really a memoir, but wisdom and insights gathered along the way” - what you’ve got is a front-row seat to the inner workings of what it takes to become a successful Supermodel. Modeling is the dreamworld backdrop - bikini shoots on tropical islands with Whitney Houston, anyone?! Where Elle famously voted herself off the island because the photographer told her “she didn’t know how to model”. Bethann Hardison, her agent at time, dropped her from the agency as a result. Torrents of endorsement contracts, movie rolls and magazine covers followed, and so did some nightmarish realities brought on as much by entertainment industry demands, but by those Elle put on herself to be perfect.
What makes the book really worth reading is the grit it takes to carve out your own identity in a world that tells you to constantly change and be something or someone else.
Surviving infidelity, swindles, divorces, drug and alcohol addiction, an eating disorder and breast cancer - even one of those traumas could bring a person to their knees, let alone all the simultaneously layered challenges Macpherson details in the book.
Elle’s Superpower, one that we all have, but none of us tap into enough, is our own intuition - listening to your heart to make decisions. Admittedly, there’s moments when the refrain can feel a bit new age or kind of woo-woo, but underneath the wording is sound experience proven out by phenomenal career longevity, happy healthy children, 20 years sobriety, and finding love in the sexier second half of life.
Reading what Elle went through, and largely on her own, hiding the fear and insecurity behind a perfect facade broke my heart - for many years we lived five doors away from each other in Manhattan and I never knew how much she was suffering at the time.
Myself, like Elle, I tend to keep to my own counsel and not want to burden family and friends - most Gen Xers were raised to ‘suck it up, shut down and just get on with it’. Traditionally, we were taught, if you just work hard enough at your job everything will get fixed.
But at the end of the day, is your North Star financial success above all else or a meaningful life?
Elle cautions the danger of living to please other people destroys intuition.
A Visible Man
Edward Enninful
Top of mind when talking about high fashion are qualities like: Fantastical. Frivolous. Fanatical. In this book Edward Enninful, former EIC of British Vogue, lays out his extraordinary journey from refugee to his reign as King of All Things Fabulous.
Born in Ghana, fifth of six children, Edward’s family escaped with their lives and barely little else to ‘fashion’ a new life in London. Super shy and deeply observant, he explains how his interest in style, and expressing individuality grew, how he plucked the visual cues of the zeitgeist from the flea markets, fashion houses and how his rich imagination made sense of the new world where he found himself.
Unique Ways of Seeing are what distinguish Fashion Greats.
Edward’s vision for magazines, like The Face, American Vogue, Italian Vogue and then his history-making turn as the first EIC of color for Vogue have forever reshaped how the world sees fashion.
Want to understand how to make a difference and see things differently? Read his biography.
How Not to be a Supermodel
Ruth Crilly
Want to laugh your ass off? Read this book.
Ruth Crilly is the smart girl with a crazy dream: drop out of law school and become a model! Ruth hilariously scratches and claws to make her dreams come true - but never quite achieved ‘Supermodel’ status.
“You’re quite old to be starting as a model,” Ruth was told by her agent after winning a contest, and awarded a modeling contract. “Working on your ass has to become a way of life for you now”.
With those two pieces of advice Ruth proceeds to fall on her ass (almost) all the way to the top.
Crilly’s first big break came in the form of a TV commercial for a Birmingham night spot. Still working a telemarketing day job between modeling gigs Ruth turns up on time one morning in full model drag to her office job from an all- nighter shoot.
"Who ordered the Stripper?” said my Telesales Manager.
‘It was almost exactly six months later and I had been trying to creep into my Saturday job unnoticed, which was admittedly slightly optimistic, considering I was wearing nothing but a skin-tight golden minidress and four-inch glitter heels. As I hobbled across the open-plan office, I was thankful that the desks were mostly empty; the last thing I needed, after the night I'd just had, was an audience.
My head was pounding, I reeked of pineapple Bacardi Breezer and my feet felt like they'd been smashed with a meat mallet. I'd had three hours' sleep, my eyelashes were gluey with yesterday's mascara and there were twisted bits of party streamer stuck in my hair.
And the worst thing about all of this, this wildly inappropriate spectacle, was that none of it was even my fault.
The wanton outfit, the backcombed hair, the crazy, modelling world.
The world I went to when I drove down the M40 to London, like Alice going down the rabbit hole, never knowing what might be at the other end.
You can’t help but love Ruth. When life gives her lemons she swallows them whole and sh**ts sunshine - and I am excited to find her here on Substack *clicks Subscribe
Ruth’s Substack ‘A Model Recommends’
Supreme Models : Iconic Black Women who Revolutionized Fashion
Marcellas Reynolds
When Marcellas Reynolds called me out of the blue to ask me to write the foreword to his ode to black women in the modeling industry I was astounded to discover how much images of myself and my colleagues touched the lives of so many people.
Imagine being a little black gay kid growing up in middle America in the 70’s and 80’s?
Not a lot of images or examples to identify with.
Reynolds, who in the last five years has become a dear friend, turned to images of models who reflected the faces of his mother and aunts who loved, encouraged and accepted him as he was.
“Modeling is magic” is the first sentence of the introduction I penned for Supreme Models
For myself, and for Reynolds, images in magazines were a roadmap to finding a more open-minded world and crafting an image that would become a glittering passport to a better life.
Enjoy this Beautiful Book and celebrate the Revolution!
No Filter
The Good, The Bad, The Beautiful
Paulina Porizkova
Paulia Porizkova is a fantastic writer and one of the kindest, most genuine people I’ve ever met. Forget that she’s devastatingly beautiful, forget that she’s been famous all of her life - zero in on the fact that she has a lot to say about love. Raised by her grandmother, after her parents escaped communist Poland for Sweden, hoping to circle back and rescue their daughter later.
‘Little Paulina’ would be the subject of countless newspaper articles in Sweden for years before her parents were able to obtain her release… very different to the glossy life we met in, much later on…
Separation from grandmother into a family she barely knew and entering Sweden as a kind of ex-Soviet celebrity seem to be a running theme in her extraordinary life journey - extreme fame, terrifying abandonments (Rick Ocaeec her deceased husband whom she nursed through years of illness left her destitute, despite having ‘managed’ Paulina’s money and having his own large fortune earned fronting the 80’s mega rock band The Cars).
In this book she describes how she saves herself over and over again.
Arriving in Sweden at 9 years old to find her parents freshly divorced, her father moved to another town with a new wife and child, her mother announced she was ‘losing her mind’ and took off to Italy, leaving Paulina with 20 dollars for the week and a 3 year old brother to care for… Paulina makes do. When the money runs out she steals food from the grocery store.
In that moment, her world view and work ethic are formed.
“Having Money does save you from some very real things.
It saves you from starving. It saves you from having to steal food. It saves you from getting arrested for stealing food.
At some point, between the day I stole bread and cheese and the first day of ninth grade, I had begun seeing money as almost magical. I believed it would save me from everything that caused me pain. It was the solution to everything, I thought.
That summer I worked in the clothing shop, as l saved my kronos and coins, I was lifted up, buoyed by the faith that the money I earned would allow me to buy the new clothes that would save me. The most painful thing about the first day of ninth grade was not the bullying, it was the humiliation. It was the loss of hope—the shattering of the belief that money was an achievable kind of magic.”
The real magic Paulina finds in life is self-possession.
Holding her own against the odds to rise from the emotional and financial ashes to love and thrive again.
Camp 100
Glorious Flamboyance from Louis XIV to Lil Nas X
Simon Doonan
What do Lil’ Nas X, Queen Victoria, Wellness, The Spice Girls and Death all have in common? Ask window dresser extraordinaire culture pundit and author Simon Doonan and he will tell you in one word ‘Camp!’
Every page of his new book ‘Camp 100,’ complete with gorgeous illustrations by Kenzo Hamazaki, dissects both the purest and most puerile pleasures of role playing and self-reinvention that are the hallmarks of camp.
Doonan’s opening essay explains camp, literally from A-Z.
“Feel free to play fast and loose with usage. The world of Camp allows for subjectivity. You do you.” Doonan says.
“Camp is wildly democratic, encompassing people, styles and objects from every nook and cranny of society. As you have doubtless noted, Lily Savage, Amy Winehouse and Marie-Antoinette basically sport the same coiffure. Camp is simultaneously picky, but also madly inclusive. In this regard, those of us with a Camp sensibility are superior to everyone else.
We have no petty likes and dislikes which might hinder enjoyment.
No dreary preoccupations with good taste or bad taste. No thumbs-up or thumb-down.
We masticate everything. We adore everything.
Everything is ours. For us, the latest episode of Naked Attraction is spoken of in the same Camp breath as the Elgin Marbles.”
Think Karl Largerfeld ruling all he observed from behind aviators. Or Anna Wintor with her bob of steel ruling the fashion world - with a blacked out bespectacled nod of the head. I mean, we would all love to get away with some version of a fabulous uniform that instantly conveys both creativity and power.
Doonan romps through centuries of the Bold and Beautiful with characteristic wit and wonder and takes us to a place that lives deep within all of us right now.
This is just a quick note to let you know that if you see something you like here and decide to buy it, Haute Mess receives a commission from the companies whose products I’ve independently reviewed and recommended.
I’m buying all these books!