7 New Books for Fashion Week

Clutches and bangles are nice, but there’s no accessory quite like a good book. Lucky for the New York Fashion Week set, there are plenty of new releases to choose from this fall, with biographies and memoirs out from some of the most celebrated people in the world of style. Here are snippets from a few standouts.

Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin

Designer

By Andrew Wilson

“His life has many of the elements of a dark folktale or a mythic fable. It is the story of a shy, strange-looking boy from a poor working-class background who used his gothic imagination to transform himself into a fashion superstar—by the time of his death, at the age of 40, he had amassed a fortune of £20 million—but who along the way lost a part of his innocence.”

Sept. 1

Tales From the Back Row: An Outsider’s View From Inside the Fashion Industry

By Amy Odell

Editor of Cosmopolitan.com

“This pair of ripped black tights was like smelling salts: it had stirred the bored, deadened insides of people who had looked at so many shoes in their careers that they were interested in only those that looked like a species deserving of its own Latin taxonomy. And I wanted to know why.”

Sept. 1

Becoming

By Cindy Crawford

Model

“At times I’ve worried that calling models girls is a subliminal way of keeping us from growing up and owning our power. In some ways, it even serves the ‘powers that be’ to treat us like spoiled children—giving in to our demands of another latte from Starbucks or a bigger dressing room—while keeping the real power out of our hands.”

Sept. 29

Fear and Clothing: Unbuckling American Style

By Cintra Wilson

Fashion critic

“Your closet is a laboratory in which you may invent astonishingly powerful voodoo. It may be used as a tool to direct yourself toward your own ideal destiny … Dressing as the superhero/man/woman/drag queen/dictator inside you that is struggling to get out will, in real, definite ways, get you closer to realizing the earthly goals that image represents for you.”

Sept. 8

My Journey

By Donna Karan

Designer

“Designing is second nature to me. It is who I am. I can’t help it. I see a problem—a desire to look longer, leaner, and leggier—and I have to solve it. A void? Have to fill it. And fabric, well, it talks to me. I drape it on the body, and it tells me what to do.”

Oct. 13

Timeless Beauty: Over 100 Tips, Secrets, and Shortcuts to Looking Great

By Christie Brinkley

Model

“Once upon a time, way back in the day, when I took my first wobbly high-heeled steps as a model, part of the job description for commercial work like catalogs was that we had to do our own hair and makeup. Through trial and error I learned a lot—sometimes the hard way. For example, the first time I used an eyelash curler, I placed my unsuspecting lashes between the clamps and squeezed hard until I heard a popping noise! There on the curler were all my lashes, looking just like a set of falsies!”

Nov. 10

Love Style Life

By Garance Doré

Style blogger

“Take heels. As much as I love them, I know that I have to save them for special occasions, evenings out, and business meetings. My daily routine varies. I take pictures, I write bundled up on my couch, but I also walk all over town for meetings. My days sometimes end with a cocktail, sometimes at a concert, with no time to change in between. To be fully present in the things I do, I know what I want: I want to look good, but I also want to be able to forget about my clothes.”

Oct. 27