Earlier this year, I wrote a review of Megan Hess’ Grace Kelly: The Illustrated Wold of a Fashion Icon. You can read that post here. In that post, I mentioned I planned on writing a review about Megan Hess’ book about Audrey Hepburn. I planned to write and publish the post during the summer, but I never got around to it!
Since the Emmys will be this weekend, and Audrey was an Emmy winner, I decided to save the book review post until now!
Near the end of 2021, I found one of Megan Hess’ Clairs books went on sale on Amazon. It was reduced enough that I felt comfortable purchasing it. The book, called Claris, The Chicest Mouse in Paris Holiday Heist, is a Christmas book about an adventure Clair’s goes on during the holiday season in New York City. It looked super cute and, even though I don’t have children, I really enjoy owning children’s books with beautiful illustrations. Even though I purchased the book in the beginning of the year, I wanted to wait until Blogmas to publish a review post about it. Continue reading “Book Review: Claris The Chicest Mouse in Paris: Holiday Heist by Megan Hess”
Earlier this year, I decided to collect some of Megan Hess’ books. The first book I purchased was Illustrated World of Couture, but my second and third was New York: Through the Fashion Eye and The Dress: 100 Iconic Moments in Fashion.
The book was purchased at the same time as New York: Through the Fashion Eye. Even though I’m happy to own both books, they, along with other books I ordered, suffered water damage. I’m not sure how that happened because it didn’t rain anywhere near where the tracking said the package went, but it was damaged. It wasn’t damaged enough to force me to return the books, which is why I kept all of them. Still, the water damage can be seen on the top right hand corner of some of the pages. I didn’t take pictures of the damaged pages, but if you, for any reason, are curious about why I didn’t photograph certain pages and use them in this post, that is probably why. Continue reading “Book Review: The Dress: 100 Iconic Moments in Fashion by Megan Hess”
For the past few weeks, I’ve had a lot of time to read. Because of this, I decided to dedicate the next seven posts to reviewing some of the books I read, reread, or read and recently thought about.
For the first book I’m reviewing, I wanted to start with a fashion book by Megan Hess. Earlier this year, I purchased more books by Megan Hess, including some of her fashion illustration books. The first one I purchased is The Illustrated World of Couture. I love her illustrations of couture clothing and shows, so I though it would be a book I would really enjoy reading and owning.
Continue reading “Book Review: The Illustrated World of Couture by Megan Hess”
It’s June, the traditional month to get married. Here in Arizona, people do get married in June, but the weddings are usually smaller, budget friendly, and/or are held early in the morning or at night. The reason why weddings are different than weddings held in Spring, Fall, and Winter seasons is because of the hot temperatures. June is the hottest month of the year, so it’s not easy to have a wedding. Despite this, I still associate June as a month for weddings.
I own books about how to make formal dresses, including wedding dresses. Recently, while dusting my books, I remembered one of my favorite non sewing books in my collection. The book, It’s All About The Dress, is written by Randy Fenoli. Randy Fenoli is best known for staring in the TLC show Say Yes to the Dress. Randy, a fashion designer, wrote a book about everything a woman needs to know about buying a wedding dress.
The book was released in 2011 and I purchased it at that time brand new. Since then I tried to take care of it, even though I used it often as a base reference for fabrics, shapes of dresses, and other important things people will need to know not only for bridal dresses, but for formal dresses as well. Even though the book isn’t as widely available like it used to be, I still wanted to write a review about it in case anyone is curious about the book themselves. Continue reading “Book Review: It’s All About the Dress by Randy Fenoli”
July has already passed, but I still wanted to talk about the books I read. I didn’t have the time to read a lot of books, but I was able to read three. I enjoyed reading, or rereading in the case of one book, them. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish them all, but I still wanted to write a post about all the books I read last month.
Recently, while looking through my book collection, I discovered my copy of Vogue on Christian Dior by Charlotte Sinclair. When I purchased the book, I was very excited to read it, but I was distracted shortly after I began to read it and didn’t finish it. I really enjoyed reading it and wished I finished it. I had time on my hands, so I began to read it again with the intention of finishing the book.
Vogue on Christian Dior is part of a series of autobiographical books about well known fashion designers called Vogue on Designers. The series is written by the editors of British Vogue and includes books about Coco Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy, and Giorgio Armani. The book about Christian Dior is written by Charlotte Sinclair, a freelance journalist and contributing editor to British Vogue.
As someone may expect, Vogue on Christian Dior is about Christian Dior, the founder of the house of Dior. The book talks about Dior’s childhood, history before working in fashion, the founding of his fashion house, and his death. Included in the book are archival photographs of Dior, his designs, models, employees, and other photographs pertaining to the House of Dior. All the photographs were taken by the leading photographers of the time including Cecil Beaton and Horst P. Horst.
The book is much easier to read than many other autobiographies I’ve read. The way the book is written is to the point without seeming too disconnected from the subject. Because of this, the book is easy to read and a faster reader could finish the book in one or two days. Even though it is easy to read, it still contains a lot of information and focuses on the important highlights of Dior’s life.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a biography about Dior and his career, but knows very little about Dior and his life. I also would recommend this book to any Dior fan, even ones who are well versed in Dior’s life. The photographs in the book make it worth owning and using as a coffee table book.
Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!
I recently began to clean out my books, dust them, and take innovatory of what books I own and which ones I don’t. After doing this, I realized there are a few sewing, art, and fashion books I would like to add to my library, including some newer releases and updated versions of books I already own. Although I probably won’t be able to buy all the books on my wish list, (Mostly because of the prices) I still wanted to write a post about a few of the books I would like to own. Continue reading “Art, Fashion, and Sewing Books I Want to Own- March 2021”
For many years, I collect fashion books. Some of them are for specific collections or fashion houses, others are about fashion styles from specific time periods. Some are coffee table books while others are actually textbooks that are used by colleges and professional costume designers to create historically accurate books. And, like anyone who has a large library of books on a specific subject, I have books I love more than others.
Recently, I started to go through my library of fashion books and realized some of the books in my collection would make great gifts for anyone who wants to give one to a friend or family member for Christmas. I narrowed down the group of books to five of my favorite fashion books that would make great gifts for Christmas. As of December 2020, all the books on this list are still in print and are in my own personal collection. Some may be more expensive than others, but I’m capping the price point of under $100 USD. All the books are currently available on Amazon as of December 2020. Continue reading “5 Favorite Fashion Books to Give as Gifts for Christmas 2020”
Last year, after watching videos about what the Youtubers got for Christmas, I decided not to talk about the presents I received simply because I didn’t feel comfortable talking about what others bought me. Instead, I decided to talk about the presents I bought myself because they would eventually end up here on this blog in one way or another.
Even though it’s the middle of January, some of the Christmas presents I bought myself didn’t show up until last week. Since it took so long to receive the presents (and in the case of my new boots, pick them out) it took me longer than I would like to talk about my presents.
So, onto the presents!