Book Review: New York Through a Fashion Eye by Megan Hess

I’ve been a fan of fashion illustrator Megan Hess for years. She became well known for illustrating Candice Bushnell’s New York Times number one selling book, Sex and the City, in 2008. Since then, she has had an illustrious career illustrating for the fashion industry and was commissioned by many fashion houses.  Over the years, she has released many books filled with her illustrations.

Over time I collected these books both because I love her art and I just love collecting coffee table books. Since starting this blog, I wanted to write a review about Megan Hess’ books, but I never got around to it. While looking through my books, I decided to finally write posts about her books. The first book I wanted to review is New York Through a Fashion Eye.

The book is about Megan Hess’ favorite places, fashion, stores, and more found in New York City. Though out the book, there are illustrations by Hess and a small paragraph about the places, people, and fashion she loves in New York City.

 

 

 

 

 

My favorite parts of the book are the Do/Play section, which talks about the locations Hess loves to visit and the Shop section, which is about the stores and fashion houses Hess loves to shop in New York City.

New York Through a Fashion Eye is really fun book to read and is even more fun to look at. The written portions are short but are straight to the point. They provide enough details about the places mentioned in the book without needing to go into lengthy explanations about why Hess loves them so much. I really enjoyed reading them because they provided me with enough information to know why they are included in the book

The illustrations, which is the main reason why anyone would actually purchase the book, are beautiful and visually describes the written word extremely well. The illustrations are a combination of fully rendered illustrations and sketches. They are a mix of models wearing high fashion and couture clothing, buildings, and anything else that needs to be included to emphasize the written portion. For me, the illustrations make the short descriptions about her love of New York City and fashion and fashionable places even more glamorized than I imagine them being in real life

I really enjoyed this book. If you want to know about the highlights, especially from a fashion standpoint, then this book is perfect for you. This book is not a travel guide (I doubt a normal tourists in New York City will be able to get into parties on 5th Avenue) but it does give locations tourists can visit such as the High Line and Central Park, which is open to the public and free to visit. Also, if you would like to visit some of the places in the book, there are addresses of each location. To make it easier to find the locations, there is a listings section in the back of the book where you can find the page number of all the locations mentioned in the book.

This book was published in 2016 and is current for 2016. Since then some of the places mentioned in the book closed. These places include Barneys New York (Officially closed in February 2020) and Jeffrey New York (Announced its closure of all locations on May 18, 2020). Since some of the locations closed due to the Covid-19/Coronavirus pandemic, it is important to remember this book encapsulated a time of New York City that no longer exists and is changing. This is also why this book is not a travel guide and any trips to New York City to visit anywhere mentioned in the book should include searches for each location to see if it still open before leaving home

Of course, this book is perfect for any fan of Megan Hess’ art. I think this book is one of the coffee table books that someone will enjoy not only to flip through the pages of, but also read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves Megan Hess’ art, New York City, fashion, and/or is looking for a coffee table book that will also double as an enjoyable book to read

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!