FABRIC OF DREAMS

An exceedingly detailed and discursive memoir by the young African-American fashion designer responsible for a very successful line of inexpensive women's wear who in only a few years went from a job in the quality assurance department at J.C. Penny to heading (at the ripe age of 28) his own clothing company, with annual revenues in excess of $40 million. Hankins, one of seven children raised by an indomitable single mother in Elizabeth, N.J., demonstrated a talent for fashion at an early age—he made a dress for his mother to wear to a wedding when he was seven. His memoir (coauthored by People magazine correspondent Markley) stresses the importance of the teachers in grade and high school who encouraged him, as well as that of the many figures in the fashion industry who helped him along. The story is a good one, and Hankins hawks his clothes on the Home Shopping Network, but it's hard to imagine the network's viewers feeling they need quite so thorough a record of events in the life of someone who is, after all, still rather young and whose name is not yet on everyone's lips.