Fashion House

Versace. The very name conjures up images of outrageous glamour and bold sexuality, opulence and daring. All of course true, but only half the story. Versace is also the legacy of a great creative genius from a poor, backward part of southern Italy who transformed the fashion world through his intuitive understanding of both women and how a changing culture influenced the way they wanted to dress. House of Versace shows how Gianni Versace, with his flamboyant sister Donatella at his side, combined his virtuosic talent and extraordinary ambition to help create celebrity culture.

Paris 1925: When news reporter Abigail Dixon trades the Chicago newsroom for the Paris fashion scene, she finds herself dazzled by the latest looks from Coco Chanel, sipping champagne at the Ritz, and interviewing a famous designer. Stepping into his luxurious atelier on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Abigail is ready to swoon over the exquisite gowns. The last thing she expects to find is her estranged stepmother lying dead on the fitting room floor–and Abigail framed as the prime suspect.

Evie, Countess of Woodridge, is on a mission to rescue her favorite modiste from the consequences of an unfavorable review. Her quest is a timely diversion as her granny, Toodles, appears to be suffering from a case of restlessness. All goes well until Evie's public clash with the journalist responsible for the article is followed by the journalist's death. The circumstances are suspicious and the police is warning Evie to stay away from the case. While she is happy to comply with the detective's request, the killer has other ideas and goes one step too far . . .

In When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on three visionaries who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.

Global superstar Dolly Parton shares, for the first time, the full story behind her lifelong passion for fashion, including how she developed her own, distinctly Dolly style, which has defied convention and endeared her to fans around the world. Featuring behind-the-scenes stories from Dolly Parton’s life and career, this audiobook spotlights her most unforgettable looks from the 1960s to now. T

During André Leon Talley’s first magazine job, alongside Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decades-long friendship with the enigmatic, often caustic designer. Propelled into the upper echelons by his knowledge and adoration of fashion, André moved to Paris as bureau chief of John Fairchild’s Women’s Wear Daily, befriending fashion's most important designers (Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta). But as André made friends, he also made enemies.

Here is a short, sleek novel of encounters, set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami's masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. At its center are two sisters: Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny's toward people whose lives are radically different from her own.

On the morning of March 27, 1995, four quick shots cracked through Milan’s elegant streets. Maurizio Gucci, heir to the fabulous fashion dynasty, had been ambushed, slain on the steps to his office by an unknown gunman. Two years later, Milan’s chief of police entered the sumptuous palazzo of Maurizio’s ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani - nicknamed “the Black Widow” by the press - and arrested her for the murder. Did Patrizia kill her ex-husband because his spending was wildly out of control? Or is it possible Patrizia didn’t do it at all?

In Project 333, minimalist expert and author of Soulful Simplicity Courtney Carver takes a new approach to living simply - starting with your wardrobe. Project 333 promises that not only can you survive with just 33 items in your closet for three months, but you'll thrive just like the thousands of woman who have taken on the challenge and never looked back. Let the decluttering begin!

Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that. Matriarch begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven.

Beautiful. Willful. Charming. Blunt. Grace Coddington’s extraordinary talent and fierce dedication to her work as creative director of Vogue have made her an international icon. Known through much of her career only to those behind the scenes, she might have remained fashion’s best-kept secret were it not for The September Issue, the acclaimed 2009 documentary that turned publicity-averse Grace into a sudden, reluctant celebrity. Grace’s palpable engagement with her work brought a rare insight into the passion that produces many of the magazine’s most memorable shoots.

In this candid memoir, featuring a foreword by Barbra Streisand, renowned designer Donna Karan shares intimate details about her lonely childhood, her four-plus decades in the fashion industry, her two marriages, motherhood, and her ongoing quest for self-acceptance and spiritual peace.

Aurora James’s life is a great American “success story”—precisely because it looks so different from others we’ve seen. Scouted as a teen model, James struggled with body image and became disenchanted by the industry’s objectification of women and commodification of race. After she’d hit rock bottom, dropping out of high school and being arrested for street racing, she was forced to reshape her life. A slew of fashion-related jobs led James to discover the power of the runway, and she started her own business in a flea market.

With his now-legendary store on 125th Street in Harlem, Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the 1980s, remixing classic luxury-brand logos into his own innovative, glamorous designs. But before he reinvented haute couture, he was a hungry boy with holes in his shoes, a teen who daringly gambled drug dealers out of their money, and a young man in a prison cell who found nourishment in books. In this remarkable memoir, he tells his full story for the first time.

Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe--these were the three superstars of fin-de-siècle Parisian high society who, as Caroline Weber says, "transformed themselves, and were transformed by those around them, into living legends: paragons of elegance, nobility, and style."

Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture. She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters. In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than 2,000 people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire.

France, 1942 Once, Paulette Leblanc spent her days flirting, shopping and drawing elegant dresses in her sketch pad. Then German tanks rolled into France, and a reckless romance turned into deep betrayal. Blaming herself for her mother’s arrest by the Gestapo, Paulette is sent away to begin a new life in Paris, working as apprentice to fashion designer Sabine Ballard. But Maison de Ballard is no ordinary fashion house. While seamstresses create the perfect couture gowns, clandestine deals and secrets take place out of sight.

Scouted by a modeling agent when she was just sixteen years old, Cameron Russell first approached her job with some reservations: She was a serious student with her sights set on college, not the runway. But modeling was a job that seemed to offer young women like herself unprecedented access to wealth, fame, and influence. Besides, as she was often reminded, “there are a million girls in line” who would eagerly replace her.

As a young woman, Kate Betts nursed a dream of striking out on her own in a faraway place and becoming a glamorous foreign correspondent. After college—and not without trepidation—she took off for Paris, renting a room in the apartment of a young BCBG (bon chic, bon genre) family and throwing herself into the local culture. She was determined to master French slang, style, and savoir faire, and to find a job that would give her a reason to stay.

Older, but Better, but Older has the playful wit, self deprecation and worldly advice we have come to expect from these bestselling authors, but now that advice is focused on the French woman's mindset as she hurtles towards forty. Caroline de Maigret and Sophie Mas are back to amuse you with how they find they are modifying their favorite bad-girl behavior as they address beauty, love, seduction as well as lifestyle, family, work, and living alone.