Ask A Stylist: Top Ten On Style

Books that shaped my mind and eye

Is there anything better than a bank holiday read? A nap, a glass of wine and a good book is a cure-all, much like a good stomping long walk for the mind. Here is a curation of my all time favourites on style: how to have style, how to live stylishly and how to create the most stylish imagery. Many of these titles are second-hand or first editions and linked to various small bookshops. These are the books that shaped my mind, and my eye. I hope you find creative solace in them too.

1. Recently I re-read Betty Halbreich’s ‘I'll Drink to That’ a delightful and breathtakingly honest read of her life as she pulled herself out of the abyss and into her formidable styling career: ‘some Manhattan socialites tended to drown their sorrows in diamonds. Betty Halbreich got a job dressing the rich and powerful.’ Betty is like a fine glass of champagne….and she’s still going late into her eighties! I love this memoir, it’s life-affirming and thought-provoking from a woman who has truly, seen it all….and then some.

2. Hard to find these days as it was published in limited quantities for The Design Museum exhibition in 2008, this ‘Tim Walker Pictures’ is an unusual volume compiled by Walker himself and offers the reader a privileged glimpse into his artistic process. A mélange of photo essays and personal pictures, as well as scrapbook pages of collages and preliminary studies, it take us deep into his creative methods. It portrays his very best work (in my opinion, that British Vogue editorial with Lily Cole in Gujarat, India, 2005) and its A3 size makes it a voluminous coffee table addition. Later books (V&A) are most focused on his surreal style but theres something British, whimsical and effervescent about this segment of early 90s to 2000s work.

   

3. A novel on style that’s charming, clever and very funny, Elegance By Kathleen Tessaro. I remember reading this over a decade ago, after (ironically) picking it up in a charity shop. The protagonist Louise, browsing in a second-hand bookshop, stumbles over a faded hardback. Elegance is an A–Z of style, written by French fashion expert, Madame Antoine Dariaux: a veritable what-not-to-wear in print.

   When Louise starts to follow Madame's advice, her life is transformed.

   

4. Bill Cunningham On the Street: Five Decades of Iconic Photography is a must have for any style lover. ‘We all get dressed for Bill’ said every fashion editor worth their salt about the original street style photographer. He took pictures for the New York Times from 1978 until his death in 2016 and wrote the beloved columns On the Street and Evening Hours, which began in 1989. I also highly recommend the docu-film on this life (I’m sure is available on Prime) which captures him at home and at work, pedalling around NYC in his blue worker jacket on his bike.

   

5. An astonishing influence on modern style, Grace Coddington was the model of the sixties before Twiggy. The muse behind Vidal Sassoon's Five Point Cut, she posed for Bailey, Donovan, Duffy and Norman Parkinson in Swinging London and jumped into a pool in Saint-Tropez for Helmut Newton. Surviving a serious car-crash, she later became a fashion editor at British Vogue and during the Seventies and the Eighties started to create the fantasy travelogues that would become her trademark. ‘It was Parkinson who taught me to always be watching. In my modelling days, I was like a sponge on set, observing and learning. What made for a great idea? How to best show the clothes? What poses worked? What transformed a good fashion photograph into an exceptional one?’

6. With 350 illustrations, including many famous photographs by Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and other major fashion photographers, ‘Diana Vreeland The Eye Has To Travel’ is an intensely visual book that shows fashion as it is being invented. Beginning in 1936, when she became a fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar, Vreeland established herself as a controversial visionary who had an astonishing ability to invent and discover fashion ideas, designers, personalities and photographers. A formidable woman who was one of the first to align fashion with culture, art and science in magazines ‘You can see and feel everything in clothes.’ Also the title of a 2011 docu-film made by her grand-daughter!

   

7. ‘The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.’ Every stylist and photographer should educate themselves with John Berger's Ways of Seeing, one of the most stimulating and influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it’s an anthology on how to have perspective and yes (just FYI it reads quite dated) but take it within the context of the time. It’s impossible to comment on Berger without bringing in Susan Sontag ‘On Photography’ both formidable pieces of work (and key undergraduate art history books) that changed the way I ‘view’ images and conceptualise fashion and art.

   

   8. The woman behind Alexander McQueen, Blow By Blow is a captivating journey through Isabella Blow’s life as told by her devoted husband Detmar Blow. A one-of-a-kind look at her unforgettable impact on the fashion world, and a moving exploration of her inspiring and ultimately tragic tale. A fashion editor for Tatler, Vogue and The Sunday Times, she was known for ‘discovering’ icons Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy and Hussein Chalayan. She was a true patron of the industry and genius before her time, much like her prodigy McQueen, who died sadly after her. Her story reminds me of a grown up The Bell Jar (a tentative link given the magazine industry format) but a fascinating comment between the creative mind and tendency towards mental illness too.

   

9. In my opinion, the most stylish woman who lived in the last century is Lee Radziwill, sister of Jackie Kennedy. This book is hard to find (and expensive) but LEE is a beautiful compilation, filled with anecdotes and personal photographs, curated by Radziwill herself making it an intimate reflection on her world. After she passed in 2019, Christies held an auction of her personal items and from art to accessories, everything was exquisite. Fashion writer Hamish Bowles said Radziwill ‘defined dynamic American style for decades’ yet she saw herself as inherently European. She was Giorgio Armani’s muse, and her friendship with Warhol resulted in a series of portraits, and later Polaroids, which Lee loved, saying, ‘This is how I want to be seen — simple, casual, free’.

   

10. Can’t end without a nod to Annie Leibovitz! The foremost portrait storyteller of our time. The rise of the prominent female fashion photographer (Camilla Akran & Venetia Scott being two of my favourites) is a joy to watch and Leibovitz acknowledges the crucial pillar that fashion fuels in her work ‘My work for Vogue fuelled the fire for a kind of photography that I might not otherwise have explored.' Visually arresting, this compiles her strongest work.

Let me know if you decide to pick any of them up! xC