Five stylish women in five vignettes-cum-case studies: how they lived, how they dressed, and how the closet reflects the soul. Canadian biographer Fowler, author of quartets and quintets of women's history (Below the Peacock Fan: First Ladies of the Raj, 1987, etc.) groups those old stylish chestnuts—Marlene Dietrich, the Duchess of Windsor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—with a pair of lesser-known clothes horses,Empress Eugenie Bonaparte of France, wife of Louis Napoleon; and Belle Epoque writer and socialite Elinor Glyn. All five, Fowler states, ``wrote their life stories in fabric and feathers and furs.'' After a beginning academic essay defining style as ``a mode of expression which is laudable in its order, conspicuousness, consistency and cohesion of separate elements,'' she launches into five tales that utulize the rather less academic device of inhabiting the minds of the subjects: ``Now, she could feel his hot, heavy-lidded gaze on the black serge stretched taut across her breasts.'' Each heroine's wardrobe is described vis-Ö-vis her social, political, psychological, and sexual environment. Clothes are a metaphor: Jackie's pillbox hats were crowns for America's royalty; Eugenie's huge crinolines (ten feet of fabric at the hem) represented the ``sham'' that was the Second Empire in France—solid on the outside, but with no stability. If you can get past all the socially relevant chitchat, there's the good stuff: the clothes and jewels. These women had closets bigger than houses; they traveled with hundreds of trunks; they were never far away from servants with ironing boards. And best of all, they were self-invented and self-dramatizing. Elinor Glyn had five tiger skins, each one given to her by a different lover. Jackie wore evening gloves with 20 buttons. Dietrich had a swansdown coat with a four-foot train made out of 2,000 dead birds. Cruel and not environmentally correct, yes. But a nice dose of vicarious opulence for those of us who buy our duds at the Gap.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1996
ISBN: 0-312-14757-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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