Why read In My Fashion?

Book cover of In My Fashion

Book description

Bettina Ballard, Paris-based correspondent and later Fashion Editor for US Vogue, was at the centre of the fashion world from the 1930s to the ’50s and an intimate of Coco Chanel, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Elsa Schiaparelli. With journalistic flair, she captures the spirit of pre-war Paris, the working methods of…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked In My Fashion as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Carol Kino

Author

I find midcentury fashion memoirs inspiring because they’re filled with stories of strong, self-realized women who really managed to have it all. This one by Bettina Ballard, French editor for American Vogue in prewar Paris, goes one better because it also offers heartbreaking commentary on the war.

Alongside observations about great designers like Chanel and Dior, Ballard writes stirringly of the tragic, gruesome fates that befell many in her world and the courageous way some resisted the Germans to save their art form, couture. Vogue tries to bring her back to New York, but she swiftly returns to Europe as…

From Carol's list on best books about young women figuring out their lives while society is changing around them.

Dana Thomas

Author

Ballard was the Paris editor for American Vogue between the wars, before returning to New York to help run the glossy. In 1960, she published her memoir, In My Fashion, a wonderful snapshot not only of the fashion industry during the European Modernist era, but also of life as a young single American woman in Paris at its most Paris-y. You don’t have to be a fashion lover to love this book.

From Dana's list on fashion in Paris.