Thursday, October 16, 2008

Stylish and brainy

I might well the only person on Earth who prefers a bit of copy to go with her fashion magazine photo spreads. For most people who like looking at nice clothes, it wouldn't matter if the words were in French, German or Icelandic.

So I'm really enjoying The Meaning of Sunglasses: And a Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable, by Hadley Freeman (it was one of the three books I ordered on the Internet - I'm still waiting for the Buffy book...). Freeman is a fashion writer for The Guardian, and this book is a collection of her columns for that paper. It's, like, literary.

What I like about the book is that it's well written, witty, and quite down to earth. She obviously has an interest in fashion, but she's not going to tell you that a trenchcoat - or any item of clothing or accessory - is a "must have", and has a healthy disrespect for fashion media. She also acknowledges that it's quite okay to spend a grand on a handbag, as long as your love of the handbag outweighs your guilt about spending so much money on it.

And there aren't even any pictures...


4 comments:

Watson Woodworth said...

No pictures?
That's like books about movies with no pictures.
Sure, I've read them but it still strikes me as odd.

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Angela said...

Now that is my kind of book on that subject. You know pictures just don't do it for me.

Violet said...

nigel: that just shows how well-written it is, that you don't need the pictures. Still, if you can't tell the difference between a trenchcoat and a princess coat, or think a Manolo Blahnik is a cocktail, then even pictures might not help...

angela: true!