Clothes, Karan believes, should be “a supporting player in your story, never the story itself.” In her elegant and...
A stylish yet substantive memoir from a fashion titan, written in a New York accent.
With equal parts restraint and candor, Karan chronicles the story of her life so far: a rocky childhood in Queens, her time at Parsons School of Design, her rise to the top as a fashion designer, and her present-day passion for philanthropy. Karan’s turbulent childhood informed her early goal of becoming a stay-at-home mother, as well as an enduring impulse to surround herself with people and nurture them. She breathlessly narrates her climb to the top at Anne Klein and the creation of her own label—here, she’s in Milan sourcing fabric; there, she’s at Versailles, surrounded by celebrities. The glamour and elitism of the fashion world threatens to alienate readers, but the author’s voice is genuine and honest. Her career path, however, soon cedes importance to her spiritual one. But when talk of psychics, cabala, yogis, feng shui, and silent retreats veers from the mainstream, Karan takes readers by the hand. She acknowledges her “woo-woos” while never belittling her faith in them. She writes of the professional and romantic beginnings and endings that have shaped her life with compassion, both for herself and for those involved. Ironically for a woman who so famously embraces black for her wardrobes, in Karan’s life, there is no black or white. There are no real villains here and few absolutes: just good friends, valuable mentors, great loves, and significant losses. Embellished with decorous name-dropping—one of her best friends is Barbra Streisand—Karan’s effort is still authentic and sometimes funny. Without the need for lurid details or sensational ploys, she keeps the pages turning.
Clothes, Karan believes, should be “a supporting player in your story, never the story itself.” In her elegant and satisfying memoir, the author achieves just that.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-88349-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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