A charming, heartfelt homage to the makers, past and present, who have defined lives and communities across the world.
Essays in celebration of artisans.
At first glance, the worlds of fashion and fishing may appear to be disparate topics, but using poetic language, childhood experiences, and knowledge of cultural history, Deming captivatingly weaves together these communities. Inspired by a 2016 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring Yves Saint Laurent’s “sardine dress,” the author set out to learn more about the artisans who have made an impact on her life. Among them are her maternal ancestors, who ran a couture dressmaking business “in Manhattan from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression,” and the herring fishermen on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick, Canada, where she spent her childhood summers. Deming laments “the world’s dismissal of makers in favor of manufacturers,” which has “driven such small-scale artistry into obsolescence.” In a fascinating journey, she takes us around the world, from New Brunswick to New York to Paris and beyond, chasing leads and sifting through archives and sharing her family’s history and her own quest for continuity and belonging. Deming lovingly describes her grandmother’s skills cutting fabric and sewing together an elegant dress without a pattern as well as her remarkable ability to give new life to the author’s boring, secondhand prom dress. She also expresses the same childhood admiration and excitement in her descriptions of watching the fishermen on the island pull their bounties from the sea. “How much human life depended on the sea and the people’s ability to make vessels and nets and ropes and sails and salt, and to read water and sky and stars. Their ability to survive unimaginable hardship.” A running theme is the detachment between mother and daughter that has plagued Deming’s family for at least two generations, ultimately leading to her grandmother’s being buried in an unmarked grave and listed as having no heirs. At times, the details repeat across the essays, but this takes little away from the book’s overall high quality.
A charming, heartfelt homage to the makers, past and present, who have defined lives and communities across the world.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64009-482-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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