Fashion Babylon
Product Description
CAUTION: Reading this book will forever change the way you peruse the racks at Bergdorf’s or flip through the pages of Vogue.
Taking the reader through six months in a designer’s life, Fashion Babylon follows an anonymous A-list British fashion designer looking to break out across the pond. Structured around three of the annual “must” industry events, this irresistible work of reportage goes inside the well-cut seams of the fashion world, where women are paid tens of thousands of dollars for simply getting dressed and where a wrong skirt length can cost you your career. You’ll find out how a collection is put together — from the objects of inspiration to the catwalk, into the shops and, hopefully, onto the cover of a magazine — and learn who goes to the shows and where they sit…and whose backside they have to kiss to get there.
Witty, naughty and jam-packed with celebrity gossip, Fashion Babylon decodes the markups and the comedowns, the fabulous extremes and the shoddy shortcuts behind one of the most lucrative and secretive businesses in the world.
Written by admin under Fashion Books.
New York Foodie
March 4, 2010 at 3:14 am
I tore through this book (as part of my celebration of Fashion Week in New York.) It is liberally peppered with “blind items” and some not-so-blind gossip — I loved Tom Ford complaining to the Gucci PR firm that they had to find a way to stop Posh Beckham from buying and wearing his clothes! Is this great literature? Of course not. But is it an interesting look behind the curtain at the fashion industry, written in a novel form? Absolutely!
Rating: 4 / 5
Dumb Blonde Reviewing
March 4, 2010 at 3:48 am
I’ve been hooked on nearly all of Imogen Edwards-Jones & “Anonymous”‘s books for a while now. First was Hotel & Air Babylon, but now she’s starting to show that yes, she hit the nail on the head with a good thing, but she’s lost it. After reading this and her most recent book, Beach Babylon, in quick succession, I found myself very disenchanted with the whole series. Beach Babylon I thought would have been ideal after coming back from a beach holiday, but she aimed too high, by setting it on an expensive island resort, which really, the book is not aimed at the kind of person who would go there.
Fashion Babylon – where do I start? It’s everything you already know about the fashion industry. The drugs, the stick thin models, the clothes that are “in” one month, and which you won’t be seen dead in the next month. Skinny jeans seem to be sticking around for the moment, but for how long? Normally when I get into a fashion, they go out of fashion. And everything’s “vintage”. And then there’s the celebrity name dropping. There’s not a page that goes by without Kate Moss or someone else being dropped in there.
Unlike Air & Hotel, which were set over 24 hours, and Beach, which was set over a week, Fashion Babylon was set over six months, and it’s a very tedious six months. Imogen did well setting Air & Hotel over a period of 24 hours, as they’re fast paced, and barely leave you any time to think. Fashion Babylon is set over six months because it’s that amount of time that you need to get ideas for your next ‘collection’, to getting it onto the catwalk. Interlaced with everything you can possibly imagine, from frills to pink satin, it’s confusing, and certainly not aimed at someone like me, but made out to look like it is.
I have to say, as much as I like Imogen Edwards-Jones, I’m going to give her Babylon books a rest for now, and try some of her other books – which seem to be all about her fertility and babies. Funny that.
Rating: 2 / 5
Jody
March 4, 2010 at 5:40 am
Chances are you are reading this book because you are into fashion. The chances are, also, that you already heard or read most of the rumors in this book, this book just puts a story around them. A hodgepodge of random fashion and model facts. The interesting part of the novel, just seeing a designer’s life and cycle of building a collection to runway.
Rating: 2 / 5
Au Hiu Wan Emily
March 4, 2010 at 6:55 am
this is a quite interesting book that have lost of gossip, and some time inoformation in side~ let u to know more about the market.
Rating: 5 / 5
John Matlock
March 4, 2010 at 8:26 am
Written in novel form this is a insider look at the high fashion industry. And an industry it is. There’s something very subtle that makes one simple little black dress cost $5,000 and one almost identical at WalMart that might be $50. And there’s something that makes one girl get paid a small fortune for wearing that $5,000 dress down a runway while dozens of very similar looking girls are walking around outside in the WalMart dress merely walking to work. And strangely enough, that WalMart dress just may have been a $5,000 dress a very short time ago, walking down a runway in front of cameras that were waiting to send pictures to China, Korea or elsewhere.
The story here is partly credited to Anonymous, supposedly a top of the line designer in England, but one who has never quite made it across the Atlantic.
It’s a fascinating look at an indistry, a lifestyle that most of us will never touch.
Rating: 5 / 5