Book Crush: Women in Clothes

Imagine a book on style written by the cool girls that graduated high school two years before you did, and you have Women in Clothes. *sigh*

Now, I love to read. Damn it, do I love to read. And I don't discriminate, either. I've Sweet Valley High-ed it, me and Jo March cut our hair because sometimes you have to give the finger to your hair being your only beauty, and I've even dabbled in some Victorian-era erotica (reading it, I mean. There were a lot of underage prostitutes). But I have a particular affinity for beauty and fashion books.

I am however, sick of the lists of "Ten Things Every Woman MUST HAVE in Her Closet", and "Five Lipsticks You Gotta Have Before You're 30" and all that bullshit.  Don't get me wrong: I know a white button down shirt is versatile and putting on a Burberry trench coat WILL make me feel like Audrey Hepburn strolling along the Seine, but Lord. I'm ready to create my own lists.

That's where this book comes in. It has given me major LOLz (the story about the missing mittens is a favorite), and also made me super uncomfortable, and also really curious. It has provoked many thoughts.

Through a series of essays, surveys, and interviews (and some interesting pictures) stories are told of how women think when they're dressing. And there are even a couple of dudes thrown in. Instead of being prescriptive (i.e. You HAVE to have full brows; boobs are out, asses are in; NEVER wear red lipstick to a job interview), it really explores different women's taste, style, ability and desire to put a look together, and what's in it for them. I really felt like reading this book was like having a conversation. It made me think a lot about what's important to me on how I present myself to others, as well as myself. Totally fascinating read.

What are you guys reading?  Let me know!

PoK,

Monica

My First Love.. Kevyn Aucoin's 'The Art of Makeup'

My tattered old copy.. please excuse my still photography skills ;)

I remember going into Barnes & Noble when I was a teenager in the late 90s *ahem*.  We had this really cool one in my hometown - it looked like some eccentric old man's home library, or like it belonged on Diagon Alley.  It was all dark wood, rich forest green carpeting and a rickety loft where the magazines and coffee shop were.  I was always petrified that the floor was going to cave in up there (and that there was a body in the elevator, but I digress).  It has since been replaced with a fancy-shmance B&N in a nicer part of town with better lighting and it's only one story, but it will always been the place where I fell in love, head-over-heels, for the first time, with the legendary, funny, and unbefuckinglievably talented Kevyn Aucoin.

Probs my favorite picture of his work.  Look at those dagger nails!

My best friend would always head to the fiction section, and I would always head to the fashion and art section.  Now, this was the '90s, and fashion and art and beauty (the like, 2 beauty books they had) were all housed in two or three shelves.  'The Art of Makeup' was this huge, formidable, gorgeous book on the very top shelf that I would gravitate toward every time we entered the store.  I looked at all of the pages, I obsessed over every detail.  At $35, it was prohibitively expensive for me, who only had an allowance when my mom felt like giving me one/remembered it/felt sorry for me.  So the BFF and I would go to the bookstore whenever we had free time (when we weren't eating pizza and watching the Mickey Mouse Club), and my torrid love affair would begin all over again with Kevyn and his book, my hands luridly caressing each page.  It was magic - the women he worked with looked real, they weren't photoshopped to death, their eyelashes weren't cartooned in; this was true, handcrafted artistry.  There's lighting, sure; there's different photography styles used, yes, and even some photoshopping.. but they still looked like real women.  Their beauty was enhanced by his artistic hands.  

J-Lo would be proud of Cindy (C-Crawf?) and her baby hairs.

Plenty of text to get the imagination rolling, too.  I <3 you, Kevyn.

I finally got the book for Christmas, and it was hard for me not to take it everywhere (it's enormous, but I still pined for it while I was at school).  This book was, and still is, so damn beautiful.  It doesn't clutter you with a bunch of brand names of must-have products you JUST GOTTA BUY (he had a very special philosophy on that), or step-by-step-you-must-do-it-in-this-way rules and regs (thanks, Bobbi Brown).  He has a bit of that, but really, it's designed to let your imagination fly with products you already have (but if you're having a Tina Turner moment, go out and buy the gold body paint).  I still feel like his apprentice when I read it; this book is his manual handed down to me, entrusted in my hands.  It was the first thing to really spark my imagination, and to continue to stoke the fire so many years later.  If you love makeup, and you don't have this book, don't wait.  You can actually get it for pretty cheap on Amazon (it's out of publication, so it won't be in B&N anymore).  He has other books available in the bookstores now, but this one is a real-deal treasure.