Here are 100 books that To Die for fans have personally recommended if you like
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I'm a journalist and author writing (mostly) about labour rights and the politics of the fashion industry. This work has taken me to Bangladesh, Kenya, Macedonia, and the Topshop warehouses in Solihull. I am the author of Foot Work – What Your Shoes Are Doing To The World, an exposé of the dark origins of the shoes on our feet. My award-winning first book Stitched Up – The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, is available in six languages and was selected by Emma Watson for her "Ultimate Book List".
This is an award winning book by an extraordinary social commentator who turned his anthropological eye to the Bangladeshi garment industry in the aftermath of Rana Plaza – the 2012 factory collapse that killed 1,138 people. This is painstaking and sensitive work documenting the lives of workers and the poverty and instability that drives people into garment factories. It is also a detailed explanation of how Rana Plaza was the latest in a long list of industrial homicides that stretches back to imperialism and the East India Company. It is exceptional.
Oh, Men, with Sisters dear! Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives! It is not linen you re wearing out, But human creatures lives! Stitch stitch stitch, In poverty, hunger and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread, A Shroud as well as a Shirt. --from The Song of the Shirt by Thomas Hood (1843) Labour in Bangladesh flows like its rivers -- in excess of what is required. Often, both take a huge toll. Labour that costs $1.66 an hour in China and 52 cents in India can be had for a song in Bangladesh -- 18 cents. It…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I'm a journalist and author writing (mostly) about labour rights and the politics of the fashion industry. This work has taken me to Bangladesh, Kenya, Macedonia, and the Topshop warehouses in Solihull. I am the author of Foot Work – What Your Shoes Are Doing To The World, an exposé of the dark origins of the shoes on our feet. My award-winning first book Stitched Up – The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, is available in six languages and was selected by Emma Watson for her "Ultimate Book List".
This is such an inspirational book from the heart of the anti-globalisation movement in 2001. It documents the lives of immigrant women working in underground sweatshops not just in the USA but right across the world. It resolutely stands as a monument against the ‘down trodden’ woman stereotype and welcomes you into an often ignored world where workers are fighting back against some of the biggest corporations on the planet.
In this up-close and personal look at the heroines who make family, community, and society tick, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie showcases immigrant women workers speaking out for themselves, in their own words. While public outrage over sweatshops builds in intensity, this book shows us who these workers really are and how they are leading campaigns to fight for their rights.
In-depth, accessible analyses of the immigration, labor, and trade policies, which together have forced these women into the most dangerous, poorly paid jobs, dovetail with vivid portraits of the women themselves. Louie, a longtime writer/activist and well-known figure in feminist,…
I'm a journalist and author writing (mostly) about labour rights and the politics of the fashion industry. This work has taken me to Bangladesh, Kenya, Macedonia, and the Topshop warehouses in Solihull. I am the author of Foot Work – What Your Shoes Are Doing To The World, an exposé of the dark origins of the shoes on our feet. My award-winning first book Stitched Up – The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, is available in six languages and was selected by Emma Watson for her "Ultimate Book List".
This is an anthology of work about the Bangladeshi garment industry in the months and years following the Rana Plaza factory collapse that killed 1,138 people. It is rigorous academic work that doesn’t shy away from asking hard questions, and which seeks to tackle the gigantic problem of how to end exploitation in the garment industry.
This book argues that larger flaws in the global supply chain must first be addressed to change the way business is conducted to prevent factory owners from taking deadly risks to meet clients' demands in the garment industry in Bangladesh.
Using the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster as a departure point, and to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future, this book presents an interdisciplinary analysis to address the disaster which resulted in a radical change in the functioning of the garment industry. The chapters present innovative ways of thinking about solutions that go beyond third-party monitoring. They open up…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I'm a journalist and author writing (mostly) about labour rights and the politics of the fashion industry. This work has taken me to Bangladesh, Kenya, Macedonia, and the Topshop warehouses in Solihull. I am the author of Foot Work – What Your Shoes Are Doing To The World, an exposé of the dark origins of the shoes on our feet. My award-winning first book Stitched Up – The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, is available in six languages and was selected by Emma Watson for her "Ultimate Book List".
This book is an excellent chance to hear straight from the people on the sharp end of the fashion industry. From India to Cambodia, it is full of detailed interviews with garment workers and workers’ rights advocates. As well as taking you behind the scenes of the fashion industry, it also serves as a best practise guide – from a real industry expert – for how fashion could one day be made fair and sustainable.
“Slave to Fashion offers hope of a fairer, more ethical world and gives the reader plenty of tools to navigate a challenging fashion system.”―Livia Firth
There are over 35 million people trapped in modern slavery today―the largest number of slaves in modern history. This is fueled by the global demand for cheap labor―which is what makes the fast fashion industry work.
Slave to Fashion is a highly accessible book which uses brilliant design, personal stories, and easy-to-grasp infographics to raise awareness among common brand consumers.
Fair trade and sustainable fashion expert Safia Minney draws on her extensive knowledge and personal…
I published the novel Ehrenfried & Cohn in 2016 about the decimation of the Jewish fashion industry in Berlin by the Nazis. I studied at the University of Arts in Berlin and became a fashion reporter for newspapers. Later I worked as a producer and journalist for German Public Broadcasting, the BBC in London, and PBS and CBS in New York City. I currently share my time between London and Berlin writing fact books on Jewish fashion and as a lecturer on fashion history in the US.
Fashion is, without any question, a matter of one's own taste. Or so one would think. But no other successful fashion designer has ever analysed and observed the New York fashion world of the 1950s to mid-60s as mercilessly and literarily as John Weitz did in his novel published in 1970. With his clearly English-influenced men’s designs he kept his distance from New York’s high society. Perhaps this was due to his unusual life path.
John Weitz, born to a famous Berlin Jewish family. To guarantee his education, in 1936 his parents send him to London. After his A-levels, John and a short apprenticeship emigrated to the US and worked after 1944 for the OSS (now the CIA) during the Second World War as an under-cover agent in German-occupied France and witnessed the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Dachau.
Weitz's reputation as a men's fashion designer had the name…
Here is the world of haute couture, racing cars, Seventh Avenue, Palm Beach, Sebring, New York, where the Beautiful People - and their vultures and hangers-on - pretend to live. It is a world where young Philip Ross, through a sexual arrangement that provides him with his first break, crawls onto the lowest rung of the fashion ladder and begins the great climb, over backs and bodies, from couturier's assistant to nationwide fame as an avant-garde American designer.
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!
This tiny gem of a book was born when Lazarovic decided to go on a shopping diet and paint the things she coveted instead of buying them. In the first half of her wonderfully illustrated and hand-lettered book, she explains her evolution from “I want it” child, to mall-rat teen to coming of age in the age of fast fashion. She chronicles her clothes, her awakening to the downsides of late-stage capitalism, and ends with several wise tips to help slow our consumption. A dynamo of a political pill wrapped in utterly playful confection of art and humor. One thing I do not regret buying is this book!
Like most people, Sarah Lazarovic covets beautiful things. But rather than giving in to her impulse to spend and acquire, Sarah spent a year painting the objects she wanted to buy instead. Based on a visual essay that was first published on The Hairpin, A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy is a beautiful and witty take on the growing 'slow shopping' movement. Sarah is a well-known blogger and illustrator, and she writes brilliantly without preaching or guilt-tripping. Whether she's trying to justify the purchase of yet another particleboard IKEA home furnishing, debating the pros and cons of…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
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.
I do love a novel with history and objects at the core and The Corset adds an extra layer of spine tingling to the mix as well.
Ruth is a poorly paid seamstress, awaiting trial for murder. She is visited by the well-to-do Dorothea who wants to hear her story. The object, the corset, lies at the heart of Ruth’s tale and every stitch that she made in the creation of high-end pieces for her mistress begins to carry a greater significance.
In a world of fast fashion I have become increasingly fascinated by the handmade, the art of the needle, and the skill of the maker and here it has a slightly sinister facet to it.
'Laura is a masterful writer, her deliciously gothic stories so skilfully woven that you can't get them out of your head even if you wanted to' Stacey Halls, author of The Familiars 'The Corset is a contender for my Book of the Year. Beautifully written, intricately plotted, a masterpiece' Sarah Hilary Is prisoner Ruth Butterham mad or a murderer? Victim or villain? Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor and awaiting trial for murder. When Dorothea's charitable work leads her to Oakgate Prison, she finds herself drawn to Ruth, a teenage seamstress - and self-confessed…
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…
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.
Of course, I can’t put together a list of fashion books without dedicating one of them to lingerie. Underwear: Fashion in Detail was one of the first lingerie-focused books I purchased (the other was Valerie Steel’s The Corset, unfortunately no longer in print). Full of amazing photos and equally amazing diagrams, if you want to learn about lingerie specifically, this is where to start.
From camisoles to corsets, basques to boudoir caps and girdles to garters, Underwear: Fashion in Detail gets up close to some of the most intimate items in the V&A. The book traces the evolution of underwear, from rare examples dating from the sixteenth century and the exaggerated shapes of eighteenth-century courtly undergarments, to Dior's curvaceous 'New Look' girdles to contemporary lingerie by Agent Provocateur and Rigby and Peller. Meticulous colour photography shows these fascinating garments in close detail, while intricate line drawings reveal their construction. The book also highlights the work of designers such as Vionnet and Westwood, who have…
At five years old, Kasiel was found with the pointed ends of his ears cut off. Despite that brutal start, he’s lived twelve peaceful years with the man who took him in. Keeping his hair long over his mutilated ears helps him hide the fact that he is Vanrian, a…
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…
