Here are 100 books that Designer Dirty Laundry fans have personally recommended if you like
Designer Dirty Laundry.
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As a humorous cozy mystery author, apparitions as characters are critically important members of my cast. I have introduced two ghosts—the dead wife and young daughter of one of the men in my protagonist’s life as continuing characters in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series. They serve as an important yet hysterically funny bridge that connects the main character’s past to her present life and creates an extra layer of conflict in her relationship with the widower and where she wants it to go.
Maybe it was fond memories of my own dearly-departed wise Nana that made me fall in love with Meemaw, Texas fashion designer Harlow Jane Cassidy’s ghostly granny as she worked from the Great Beyond to help her granddaughter solve a murder and clear her as the number one suspect. Give me a gal who inherits magical power and has to think on her feet when a crisis comes calling, and she has to use it.
Part paranormal, part mystery, part second chance at life and love, this is a woo-woo-infused fun trip to Never-neverland.
When her great-grandmother passes away, Harlow Jane Cassidy leaves her job as a Manhattan fashion designer and moves back to Bliss, Texas. But when she opens a dressmaking boutique in the turn-of-the-century farmhouse she inherited, Harlow senses an inexplicable "presence". Is Meemaw really gone, or she now Harlow's ghostly roommate?
Her old friend Josie orders a gown for her upcoming wedding, but when Josie's boss turns up dead, Harlow has to find the killer-with a little help from beyond.
A dead top agent, an assassinated politician, and one dangerously hot Swedish spy who knows something about her past that might end up jeopardizing her future.
What has American Division agent Katrina Foster gotten herself into this time?
Katrina knows she’s talented, but once she becomes a target, she soon…
Like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, I am a ladies’ swimwear sales exec. I love solving puzzles, asking a lot of questions, and am naturally curious (some narrow-minded people say I am nosy…go figure…LOL). So, writing mysteries set in the fashion industry was the natural next step for me to take. From the beginning of my career, I have kept a daily journal chronicling the interesting, quirky, and sometimes quite challenging people I have encountered as well as the crazy situations I’ve gotten myself into and out of. My daily journal entries are the foundation of everything I write.
I’ve always been a sucker for a good curse to thicken a cozy mystery plot, and this one has a doozy: a stunning Russian shawl worn by a fortune-teller at a bridal shower that Washington, D.C. fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian attends for her BFF Stella. I love the plucky amateur sleuth who uses her Extra-Fashionary Perceptionto capture a villain who vowed that nobody at this wedding will live happily ever after.
Like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, I am a ladies’ swimwear sales exec. I love solving puzzles, asking a lot of questions, and am naturally curious (some narrow-minded people say I am nosy…go figure…LOL). So, writing mysteries set in the fashion industry was the natural next step for me to take. From the beginning of my career, I have kept a daily journal chronicling the interesting, quirky, and sometimes quite challenging people I have encountered as well as the crazy situations I’ve gotten myself into and out of. My daily journal entries are the foundation of everything I write.
A protagonist who is loyal to a fault and willing to put her life on the line to clear an innocent friend is a key ingredient to a cozy I want to read. So, I was naturally attracted to shoe designer Maddie Springer in Danger in High Heels who springs into action and risks her life to clear her wrongly accused BFF’s boyfriend of murder. I prefer amateur sleuths stumbling and bumbling their way to solving the case like Maddy does. Her snappy comebacks gave this cozy the spice that made the story zing.
#1 Amazon, New York Times & USA Today Bestselling series! Death on the set of a Dancing with Celebrities TV show has someone taking their final bow...
Maddie Springer is all about fashion. So when her the movie star her best friend is dating, Ricky Montgomery, becomes a contestant on the ballroom dance reality hit, Dancing with Celebrities, she is over the moon at the chance to view the sparkly, spandexy costumes up close. That is until Ricky's dance partner is found dead in his dressing room...in the nude! Suddenly the police suspect him of murder, his girlfriend, Dana, suspects…
A dead top agent, an assassinated politician, and one dangerously hot Swedish spy who knows something about her past that might end up jeopardizing her future.
What has American Division agent Katrina Foster gotten herself into this time?
Katrina knows she’s talented, but once she becomes a target, she soon…
Like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, I am a ladies’ swimwear sales exec. I love solving puzzles, asking a lot of questions, and am naturally curious (some narrow-minded people say I am nosy…go figure…LOL). So, writing mysteries set in the fashion industry was the natural next step for me to take. From the beginning of my career, I have kept a daily journal chronicling the interesting, quirky, and sometimes quite challenging people I have encountered as well as the crazy situations I’ve gotten myself into and out of. My daily journal entries are the foundation of everything I write.
Coming from an apparel sales exec. career, I gravitate to cozy stories set in stores. I love clueless employees who stumble over dead bodies, and zany characters who manage to get themselves out of crazy situations. I especially enjoy cozies with a holiday theme. Slay Bells and Satchels has it all. I laughed out loud when fashionista purse lover department store sales clerk Haley Randolph finds a murdered elf in the store’s giant toy bag. Slay Bells and Satchels tickled my funny bone throughout the story, but had me guessing whodunit to the last page.
The Summer Santa Sale at Holt’s Department Store becomes a Christmas nightmare when sales clerk Haley Randolph finds a murdered elf in the store’s giant toy bag. Haley, a crazed fashionista obsessed with designer handbags, could find herself “bagged” if she doesn’t untangle this mystery quicker than Saint Nick can slide down a chimney. But Haley has another problem: Can working with hot private detective Jack Bishop put her on Santa’s “naughty” list?
Clothing is one of the most important aspects of our humanity, of the things which make us who we are. We use fashion to identify allies and enemies. To express our interests, politics, and belief systems. To make a statement about who we are to the outside world. To show our identity or ethnicity. Or to indicate our affiliation with certain groups. Fashion is everywhere, but compared to other disciplines, is very rarely talked about. Though I'm a lingerie expert, fashion in its totality interests me. I’m excited every time I learn something new, not just because I enjoy pretty garments, but because I also learn something about the nature of who we are.
Fashion is, of course, a visual medium. It’s also one with a very long history. If you want to get familiar with what people have been wearing for the last few centuries, this is the book. All the garments are taken from the Kyoto Costume Institute, a place I hope to visit one day. I’ve read this book cover to cover several times (even accidentally purchasing it more than once!), and I consider it an essential volume in my research library.
Clothes define people. A person's attire, whether it's a sari, kimono, or business suit, is an essential code to his or her culture, class, personality, even faith. Founded in 1978, the Kyoto Costume Institute recognizes the importance of understanding clothes from sociological, historical, and artistic perspectives. With one of the world's most extensive clothing collections, the KCI has amassed a wide range of historical garments, underwear, shoes, and fashion accessories dating from the 18th century to the present day.
Showcasing the Institute's vast collection, Fashion History is a fascinating excursion through the last three centuries of clothing trends. Featuring impeccable…
I have spent my entire life in the literary industry, first being raised by an author and her two published sisters, then signing my own book deal at age nineteen. So basically, I am completely incapable of seeing the world through anything but a bookish lens. For this little project, I was asked to make some recommendations based on a subject I care about. I chose Wasted Women. These are books about women who deserve more out of life than they have—and about the consequences of letting a clever woman stay caged.
This one is literally about a wastedwoman. It’s a fascinating non-fictional journey to be taken on by the author, who has led a fascinating, glittering New York life working for Conde Naste and other high-profile jobs. A life that she is consistently self-sabotaging through the abuse of drugs—particularly the ones prescribed to her by her father when she was a child. She is smart, sharp, interesting, interested in the world around her, and yet she continues to burn everything down time and time again.
'I was twenty-six years old and an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America. That's all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was a drug addict, for one. A pillhead. I was also an alcoholic-in-training who guzzled warm Veuve Clicquot after work alone in my boss's office with the door closed; a conniving and manipulative uptown doctor-shopper; a salami-and-provolone-puking bulimic who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, wobbly, wildly hallucination-prone…
For as long as I can remember I have been absolutely gripped by the stories that old clothes can tell. From visiting fashion museums as a child to collecting books on the subject, I was drawn to the shapes, the fabrics, and the tales. I can remember a curator once telling me that clothes are the closest we can get to people in the past. They are the ghostly outlines of our ancestors and that has stayed with me. We give so much away about ourselves through the clothes we choose to wear and so they really do matter.
Set in a mid-century department store, this wonderful short novel details life in a mid-20th-century frock department through the eyes of the women who worked there.
It is a book that highlights the importance of clothing in women’s lives at that time and the very specific kinds of garments. The tale follows Lisa as the news sales assistant in Cocktail Frocks and the friends she makes along the way. It is a sharply observed, funny, and tender story bringing the old department store alive.
As a professional organizer since 1999, I’ve realized that the problem isn’t so much that we are disorganized, but that we are out-matched. We have too much stuff, it is too cheap and we are too busy and we can’t keep up. If you really want to stay organized, you have to examine your relationship to stuff. Why we want what we want and buy what we buy. Less but better!
Przybryszewski,
a history professor at Notre Dame, had me from the start where she says she’s
probably the only person to have spoken to the Supreme court wearing a ’suit
that won a blue ribbon at a country fair.” Taking American fashion back to the
Home Economics taught at Land Grant Universities and subsequently, at high schools, Przybryszewski argues that knowing how to sew was not just a
practical skill, but also made us better consumers.
Making our own clothes
might have seemed like drudgery, but it was empowering and now that most of us
don’t have those skills, we’re literally slaves to fashion… we can’t tell
high-quality from low quality, we can’t put in pockets when we need them… and
nothing, nothing is ever our exact size. This is a book that will make you want
to learn to make your own clothes… or at least cast a far…
As a glance down any street in America quickly reveals, American women have forgotten how to dress. We chase fads, choose inappropriate materials and unattractive cuts, and waste energy tottering in heels when we could be moving gracefully. Quite simply, we lack the fashion know-how we need to dress professionally and flatteringly.As historian and expert dressmaker Linda Przybyszewski reveals in The Lost Art of Dress , it wasn't always like this. In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable group of women,the so-called Dress Doctors,taught American women how to stretch each yard of fabric and dress well on…
Like most, I grew up reading the classic literature assigned to me at school. But what I always found lacking were characters and themes that related to me—a queer, poor, half-Mexican in 80’s rural Texas. I wanted to be a writer at an early age, but took a 15-year detour as an editor at DC Comics, Scholastic, and other big publishing houses. While there, I was proud to find new diverse talent with new perspectives and voices. Stories are magical when they act as windows through which we learn about others, but they can be even more powerful when they act as mirrors in which we can see ourselves.
The award-winning author of Stargazing does it again with a beautiful new fairy tale for any age. While it isn’t a reimagining of a specific tale, it has all the feels and tropes of a Disney movie—only we’re learning more about a budding friendship between a brilliant young dressmaker and a prince who struggles to be his true queer self.
If I had this story when I was a boy, I would have read it until the book fell apart and had to buy a new one. As it is now, it has a special place on my bookshelf—and in my heart.
A fairy tale for any age, Jen Wang's The Prince and the Dressmaker will steal your heart.
Paris, at the dawn of the modern age:
Prince Sebastian is looking for a bride—or rather, his parents are looking for one for him. Sebastian is too busy hiding his secret life from everyone. At night he puts on daring dresses and takes Paris by storm as the fabulous Lady Crystallia—the hottest fashion icon in the world capital of fashion!
Sebastian’s secret weapon (and best friend) is the brilliant dressmaker Frances—one of only two people who know the truth: sometimes this boy wears…
I grew up in Scotland, and from the moment I visited New York City as a tourist, I have been obsessed! I moved to NYC officially in 2000 and have been endlessly fascinated by its history. As a new immigrant who moved here knowing no one and having very little money, I struggled a lot in my initial years, and that left me wondering how people, particularly women, had survived being in the City in prior years, especially with less privileges than I had and so many more obstacles in their way to making a living. I hope these books give you the insight they gave me.
I loved that Julia Satow uncovers the history of lesser-known female department store professionals who hit the pinnacle of their careers in an era when few women were allowed to have executive careers following the Depression.
What delighted me the most were the details of tactics employed by the women to attract more consumers to the stores, such as selling bestselling novels that glamorized the career of an assistant buyer in the shop or the men’s club in which they could gawk at underwear models while shopping for lingerie for their wives. I was also surprised and amused by the stories of name artists such as Salvador Dali, who created window displays for the stores.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A glittering portrait of the golden age of American department stores and of three visionary women who led them, from the award-winning author of The Plaza. • "Ms. Satow’s carefully researched book is compulsively readable: I found myself dashing through it like a novel. She portrays the women with verve; we get a glimpse into their lives, as well as a sense of what it was like at each of these retail meccas." —The Wall Street Journal
The twentieth century American department store: a palace of consumption where every wish could be met under one…
