Weekend Review: A Sewist's Diary

Patchwork: a sewist's diary / Maddie Ballard
Portland, OR: Tin House, c2025.
144 p.

Today's book is a memoir in short chapters, arranged around garments sewn by the author. Each chapter starts with a garment and a list of what was needed to make it; then the essay goes in many directions, musing on life and larger issues. 

Ballard has arranged the book to follow her life chronology, at least loosely. In the first few chapters she is in love, living with a partner during Covid lockdowns. Then they have broken up and she is living with her grandmother (that relationship is really special), then she's going back to school and moves to a new city once more. She is a New Zealander, and this book takes place in that country. But there are many layers to her essays. 

She talks about her mixed Chinese heritage, while she sews a cheongsam embroidered with the names of her female relatives. There are discussions of friendship, family, the guilt she feels at not speaking Cantonese better, the way that clothing reflects her personal identity and more. There is some talk about fast fashion, the politics of making, and the way that hand making slows down the pace of life in a kind of resistance to capitalist busy work.  

I liked the way that sewing was the core of the book, and everything revolved around the project she was working on in each chapter. Sewing talk was a big part of the book, from fabrics to patterns to techniques, and her comment that sewing for yourself means believing in your future self. I thought that was a charming way to think of sewing a wardrobe. 

I found this a pretty good read - it's short, the hardcover includes sketches of the garments she's talking about, and sewists will relate to the crafty content. The writing is thoughtful and lyrical, but she is a younger writer so the book does contain its share of angst as well. Still, the concept is lovely and I appreciated the recognition that handcraft can help shape a life. 

 

Weekend Review: Dorothy Grant, an Endless Thread

 

Dorothy Grant: An Endless Thread / Dorothy Grant
Victoria, BC: Figure 1 Publishing, c2024.
176 p.

I came across this book in my library's online catalogue; until then I hadn't heard of Dorothy Grant. I'm so glad I found this! Grant is a West Coast Haida designer from what is now Alaska. She began designing in 1989 with her show called Feastwear, which launched her into a very successful career selling first in a boutique, and then via trunk shows and bespoke items.

This book is partly a memoir of her career and partly a look-book of her many pieces and designer lines. There are photos of many Indigenous celebrities and leaders wearing her work, as well as politicians -- one image of Governor General Mary Simon greeting Pope Francis during his visit to apologize for Residential School harms has her wearing a white Dorothy Grant capelet that echoes the Pope's robes, something I found fascinating.

Grant's work has also been collected by museums and galleries. Her designs incorporate traditional Haida motifs as well as garment types and kinds of embellishments like shellwork and embroidery, or traditional spruce root weaving. They play those elements off of modern design to create amazing pieces. 

This book was put together for a retrospective at Haida Gwaii Museum in 2024, so there are also essays by the curator, India Rael Young, and Haida repatriation specialist and museologist Sdahl Ḵ’awaas Lucy Bell, alongside some of Grant's own reflections and memories, and those of her longtime assistant, Haida curator and artist Kwiaahwah Jones. All this, plus the many large photos, make this book a wonderful read, with so much to examine. I really enjoyed it. If you can find a copy, I would recommend it to any fashion lover. 

You can find lots of fascinating information and fashion on Dorothy Grant's website, too,

(Flip through with more images, details and a short video interview with the author can be found on the publisher's website) 

Weekend Review: Heart On My Sleeve

Heart on my Sleeve / Jeanne Beker
TO: Simon & Schuster, c2024. 
256 p.

This memoir by Canadian fashion icon Jeanne Beker was a delight. Unlike a traditional memoir, this is structured as a walk through memory, tied to specific pieces of clothing. It highlights how something we wear can carry history and family with it, beyond just being a piece of clothing or an accessory. I really liked this concept and the way it was carried out. She shares an item, then talks about how she got it and the resonances of the piece. Each chapter has a line drawing to illustrate it, drawn by her own artist daughter. And this book sounds just like she's talking to you - the style is intimate and authentic, highlighting both the glamorous parts of her career and her personal challenges. 

I've read her earlier memoirs (such as Finding Myself in Fashion), and some of the stories here are repeated from those earlier books, but still just as enjoyable. The chapters are short, but cover a range of life moments. From the satchel her parents brought with them when they immigrated as Holocaust survivors, containing the small amount of family items they still had, to a Chanel dress given to her by Karl Lagerfeld, this book moves from touching and serious to funny & fashion-related. The pace is good and the book shares so many elements of her life, from her parents, partners and children, to the many famous fashion people she met and befriended in her many years of hosting FashionTelevision. 

There are some great moments included, from the unexpected generosity of Karl Lagerfeld (one of my favourite stories from past books too) to her interviews with fashion greats or music luminaries like Paul McCartney, Keith Richards and more (she worked on MuchMusic before fashion). I really enjoyed the way she started with her wardrobe and let each piece draw out recollections - we all have the experience of knowing just when and where we wore something, and what the meaning of it was to us; some pieces that we've kept forever because of that, and some that we could never wear again. 

This covers fashion history, Canadian history (a fun story about Pierre Trudeau, for example), family stories, and traces the development of Canadian media in a way, too. I thought it was a great read, and one I'd recommend to anyone interested in fashion or Canadian women's lives - especially if you were a fan of FashionTelevision in the old days like me ;) I think it's also of interest to sewists because we really feel the connection to our clothing and can understand the concept of this book fully. Enjoyed this one! 

Weekend Review: Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones

 

Dolly Parton Behind the Seams / Dolly Parton
New York : Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed, 2023
336 p.

If you love costume and how people use clothing as self-expression, you'll want to read this fantastic, lushly illustrated, and lengthy book on Dolly Parton's clothing over her career. It starts when she's just a young woman starting out locally, and moves toward the present, with stories told by Dolly, as well as a large number of the people who were involved in her wardrobes at different stages. 

The cowriters/compilers of the book are Holly George-Warren and Rebecca Seaver (the second is Dolly's niece, who is now in charge of the costume archive). They have drawn together excellent documentation on varied pieces from different stages of Dolly's career, as well as stunning and clear detail photos of many garments. 

Sewists and fashion fans alike will be absorbed by this book. Dolly talks about the two local women who sewed for her early on, and started her off on her own style. She's worked with Tony Chase, Bob Mackie, and many more, and each designer gets some airtime in this book alongside examples of their work.

I enjoyed the context given for many of the pieces, and how Dolly states early on that her style was integral to her performance and her personal integrity over the years. When she started to hit it big, executives wanted her to tone it down and move into a more mainstream look, but she refused and stuck to her own sparkly style. It's such a personal brand by now, we can't imagine her another way, but this was long before going your own way was an everyday thing. 

Along with all the clothing descriptions and images, there are discussions of her hair - she owns over 200 wigs, and there's an entry from her hairdresser/wig master. And discussions of her work beyond music as well -- so much to learn and such amazing images to peruse. This one gave me hours of entertainment as I looked through the pictures to focus in on some of the details, as well as read all of the truly fascinating documentation from so many voices. 

What a fabulous read! It's a bit expensive (I read it via the library) but well worth it if you can afford it. It would make a great gift for any fashion obsessed sewist, I think. If you want to be inspired by a woman who forged her own path, stayed true to herself, and worked with many other women along the way, this is a great pick. So fun! 

Weekend Review: The Year of Less

The Year of Less / Cait Flanders 
Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, c2018.
189 p.

These kind of minimalist books always appeal to me in a weird way -- since I am not a minimalist, and I dislike the obsession for getting rid of All The Things.

Still. Thought I'd give this one a go as everyone was talking about it in my library. There's a long holds list for it as well, so I guess others are also compelled to read these stories of decluttering in hopes of catching the bug.

The summary for this book reads:

The author decides that for twelve months she will only buy consumables, consume less of many other things, declutter her apartment, get rid of 70 percent of her belongings and learn to repair things as opposed to tossing them away.

I can get behind some of this. I'm all for buying less, and repairing instead of throwing away. Most of my own buying happens at thrift stores these days, either that or fabric stores! There are frequent "shopping bans" in the sewing world, with people pledging to buy no Ready To Wear clothing for a year, or going on fabric or pattern fasts, etc. So I see people wanting to buy less, even while consumerism rages all around us and tempts even the best of us to overspend & overbuy.

But both this book and Marie Kondo's decluttering book left me cold. Both authors seem obsessive to me, using decluttering as a slightly extreme lifestyle choice. Flanders notes down what percentage of her belongings she's removed at the start of each chapter. After a year it's 80%. Either she had hoarder level stuff in the beginning, or she now lives like a Zen monk.

I don't feel that the advice for extreme clearing out will really help that many people. Maybe a few with the same personality type. But I'm never going to have a wardrobe of 23 items -- I love clothes and sewing. And I'm never getting rid of 80% of my books. The whole point of having books is that you haven't yet read them. 

That said, I could do with a general clearing out. Some of the ideas are useful. Consuming less to begin with is a fine idea. I am also reading through some books on sustainable fashion right now, and many of those have the same direction -- buy less & take care of your belongings. 

This book also delves into Canadian author Flanders' own life and personality, though. Her struggles with family dissolution, addictions and other troubles explain a lot about her need to place limits on herself in the area of spending, which may not be the same for other readers. The book thus has a little more complexity than simply a decluttering story. If you are interested in a memoir of better living through drastic decluttering, this one will be for you. 

(I originally posted about this book at my book blog, The Indextrious Reader, in 2018. Still feel the same about it!) 

Weekend Review: Patch Work

 

Patch Work / Claire Wilcox
London: Bloomsbury, 2021
304 p.

I've been wanting to read this book for a while, so was quite happy to have come across a copy of it and snapped it up. It's a thoughtful read, part memoir and part textiles -- the author works in museums in the textile field so her life and the theme of textiles as memory and part of daily life are interwoven.

I know some readers didn't want so much personal info, but I really liked it. The chapters were short sections; it felt at times like some were long prose poems. I found it very quieting reading - I slowed down and considered what she was sharing, and found many moments beautiful. 

Because she works at the Victoria & Albert, there are decades of clothing and textiles that she and her colleagues work on. And with that comes, necessarily, a consideration of time and what it does to our lives and to the remainders, the textile ghosts we leave behind. This is "patchworked" in to stories of her own life, her childhood surrounded by sewing, her own journeys, her children and so on. None of the stories are chronological -- they are just shared as they come to mind, it feels. The sections are like vivid recollections, the stories of important moments that you tell in life, not all orderly but as they occur to you. There are also a few black and white photos interspersed and that adds to the haunting feel of nostalgia, memory, and the past that permeates her work and her storytelling.

I liked the writing style, and found the arrangement of the book reflected the themes. Moving backward and forward in time, capturing what could be captured, sharing the stories behind things -- all of this has to do with the textiles she works with as well. And somehow never being able to get a firm grasp on the real story of anything... I felt the style added to the content here, although it did put off a few readers, judging from other reviews.  

But if you are interested in the more esoteric meanings of clothing, time, and history, and you love a beautiful writing style, you might like this one as much as I did. My degree was in English and History, and my current obsessions are all textile based, so perhaps this one just checks all my boxes. If you need to slow down a bit, and dream, and read small bits at a time, pick this up. This is one that I would dip into again; it's easy to pick up and read a section and put down again, just to savour one moment. I was enchanted with this read.

A very good feature and interview at the Guardian if you are interested in learning more.

Weekend Review: Walking with the Muses

Walking with the Muses / Pat Cleveland
NY: Atria, c2016.
336 p.

This memoir of a model who was most famous in the 70s and into the 80s is a dishy story of high fashion, the underbelly of celebrity and the social lives of the charmed. But it is also a sincere story of how a young girl from New York City became a ground breaking model who walked in all of the biggest shows.

Pat Cleveland was born to a single mother in 1950, and her life was shaped by her mother's artistic talents and their Harlem surroundings. Things changed when her aunt moved out and an increasingly controlling stepfather moved in. Cleveland is open about her experiences but doesn't dwell on the dark sides. She states them and moves on. This happens a few times in the book, when really awful things occur, and it does give an impression of a person who isn't able to help others in extremity. That was the only reservation I had about this book; but a reader can't see the full story, and thus can't judge. 

Otherwise, the book follows Cleveland's trajectory from teenage model travelling with the Ebony Fashion Fair, to supermodel and the toast of Paris. There are names dropped all over the place, but not just to impress; they are all people that she met, worked with, socialized with, or crushed on herself. She was firmly embedded in the world of fashion, where everyone who was someone congregated. And not only fashion people; actors, musicians, artists like Warhol, they were all there. 

Some of her stories about Paris with Lagerfeld and his circle are hilarious; some of them are poignant, some quite shocking. And early stories about travelling the US with the Fashion Fair are sadly predictable. But she's always telling stories; this is like a collection of anecdotes from her past that all feature well known figures, with her own wry eye on it all.

She draws comparisons between her experience starting out in the US, as a biracial model who was struggling to break into the big leagues, and her rapid success in Europe where her free and jazzy style of walking a runway made her into a noted personality. 

Alongside all the secrets of the fashion world and its personalities -- many of which are detailed here -- there is always also the young Pat, looking for meaning in the world. Money, drugs, bad boyfriends -- they are not what she is looking for, and when she does settle down with her true love it's a charmed conclusion. She reflects the joys of her fashion world as well as the sordid details, and I think that is what really lifts this book up. 

The love and respect she has for the women who held her up in the beginning comes through, and stamps the story with her own perspective. If you like reading about the fashion world, and wonder what it was like to start out as a biracial, teen model in the 60s, you can't go wrong with this book. Her enormous success doesn't seem to have altered her essential sweetness, and from recent interviews with her on podcasts like Dressed: a Fashion Podcast, she seems to be the same person even now. 

It's a fascinating look at the interior world of a very successful model and thus at all the stars of the fashion world of the 70s and early 80s. A must read for fashionistas.

Weekend Review: Dressed in Dreams

Dressed in Dreams: a Black Girl's love letter to the power of Fashion / Tanisha C. Ford
NY: St Martins, c2019.
246 p.

I really enjoyed this book by Dr. Tanisha Ford, who I first heard about when I put her award-winning  academic study Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul on my to-read list.

But I was able to get my hands on this particular book first, and it is much more conversational and chatty than academic; I found it a quick, entertaining and enlightening read. It's a mix of memoir and fashion history -- Ford takes a specific item of fashion as the theme for each chapter, then talks about whatever it is, ie: dashikis in the first chapter, sharing information about that fashion moment and why it is important or culturally relevant, and then how it plays out in her own life.

I found this mix really interesting. From dashikis to baggy jeans, tennis shoes to knee high boot, and Jheri curls to Afro puffs, Ford takes on elements of fashion that she explored in a search for her own identity as a Black woman coming of age in the 80s and 90s in a Midwestern factory town. She explores how fashion reflected her own growth as she reached out for an identity beyond just an Indiana girl. And she reveals how pop culture trends, in both clothing and hair and makeup, are strongly related to racial identity, as Black styles are adopted by the (white) mainstream and only appreciated after that.

Each chapter has a sketch of the item in question at the opening, done by Veronica Miller Jamison, and they are charming. And the subtitle of the book is perfectly descriptive; you can tell that Ford loves fashion. She says:

Our garments are archives of memories- individual and collective, material and emotional- that tell these rich, textured stories of our lives. To make it plain: our clothes makes us feel things. All the things.

This isn't an autobiography -- more a set of personal essays on a theme. In telling her life story, Ford skims over some years and highlights others. It's organized around memories of the fashions, in clothing and hairstyles, that defined parts of her life from the 80s to the current day -- a final chapter talks about the hoodie and the start of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. It's not explicitly shown how Ford moves through some of the challenges she discusses, but it's clear that her love of fashion as expression is essential to her life. The stories of her parents and her relatives, and some of her school friends, add depth to her stories and create an engaging and wide-ranging look at style and life as a Black woman in these years, and how dress was politically charged even if she didn't want it to be.

All of her stories highlight the importance of various fashions in African American life, from the dashiki to things like nametag jewelry and bamboo earrings. Each one is tied to her life experience and the black society she found in the different places she lived while going to college and beyond. As expected from a history professor and pop culture specialist, her knowledge is wide and here it is sprinkled in among the personal stories to create a warmly informative, fascinating, sincerely told story. If you're looking for an illuminating read about Black women's lives, this is a great choice.

Weekend Review: Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler

Some Girls, Some Hats & Hitler / Trudi Kanter
NY: Scribner, c2012
272 p.

This was an unusual read -- a memoir first published in 1984 in England, then rediscovered a decade or so ago and republished. It follows the life of Trudi Kanter, an Austrian milliner who used her business to escape Hitler's incursions into Austria (after many struggles). 

It has a different take on WWII; Trudi is very focused on her business and her relationship, not so much on politics or social action. This story is about her. She's a regular person trying to keep her head down and not get involved in everything that's going on, rather, she wants to keep her life the way it is and continue her sewing and hatmaking without any disturbance. 

Unfortunately for her, being in the midst of Germany's invasion and being a Jewish woman, that doesn't happen. 

The story is full of incidents told clearly and plainly -- how she talks her way into a buying trip outside of Austria even when travel is restricted, how clients in England assist their escape, and how her parents stay in Austria thinking it can't possibly get worse (they do eventually get out). She describes her workroom and the women in it, and the way that some of them remain loyal to Trudi despite everything, and some not so much. The discussion of her business and the day to day work, and her own clothing as well as her husband's outfits, is of course of great interest too. 

I've seen some readers mention that they felt this was too 'lightweight' to be a proper WWII memoir, but I think that might be a bias against fashion as a serious topic coming through. Trudi does not hide the difficulties they faced, but she does use her connections and her own chutzpah to get them out of the country before they face any deportations or camps -- so that there is no element of that level of suffering here. That doesn't make her story any less compelling. 

The style is also very good. It moves along quickly, it has an intimate tone that draws you in, and her observational skills are finely honed. People leap to life in her words. The final chapter or so, describing their postwar life in England as businesspeople and refugees, is not quite as intense or complex, but hearing about how Trudi got them back on track after being displaced makes you admire this tough woman who could take care of herself. 

I thought it was a good read, another viewpoint via a personal account of those years from someone outside of Germany but still caught up in the growing disaster. If you're interested in millinery, women in business, the Austrian experience of German invasion, or a look at people with all their flaws showing, this will interest you.

Weekend Review: Grace

Grace: A Memoir / Grace Coddington
New York: Random House, c2012.
416 p.

I picked up this book at the library as I've always been interested in fashion and especially Vogue. If you've seen The September Issue, then you'll have met Grace Coddington, model turned fashion editor turned long-time staple at American Vogue.

Don't be misled by the size of this book -- although it's 416 p., that's 400+ pages of wide margins, lovely little sketches done by Grace, and pretty easy reading.

I wanted to love this book. And I did love the first half. The story of her childhood could be a book in its own right. It was dreamy and lovely and extremely intriguing. Then she heads off to London at 18 to become a fashion model. She succeeds, despite a disfiguring car crash early on, bad relationships, and more. Most of the second half of the book is about her movement in the fashion world -- names, companies, photographers, various boyfriends/husbands, working for different bosses and then Anna Wintour. The route her career took is a bit unusual, and the minutiae of daily life in this high fashion world is very different to  anything familiar to me. I was interested in all this; if you're not into the everyday of fashion magazines, it might grow a bit wearing for you as a reader. 

One thing that caught me right away was the entertaining chapter headings, in the style of 19th century writers, ie: Chapter One: in which a young girl leaves home etc etc. I don't have the book with me so it's not exactly that but has the same phrasing -- and each one is pretty much a summary of the chapter so you could easily skim through it just with chapter headings.

I thought that the addition of her quirky, individual sketches was a great idea, as she says herself that she is a visual person, not a word person (and says that she's only read 2 books as an adult - can't relate!) . But this is also the downfall of the book -- the lack of facility with words and storytelling structure. There are ellipses in her story; things happen but we're not sure why or what she learned from them; weight is given to slight stories and more serious and devastating events are mentioned in passing. There's a sense that she is quite private and didn't want to tell-all in this memoir. So why a memoir at all? The most emotional truth and sense of narrative is definitely in the beginning, before she leaves home. 

Unfortunately, she doesn't take this opportunity to reflect much on Fashion as a business, or the demands made on women in this profession. She seems to take it all at face value for the most part, and not question much about the expectations of this world around physical appearance or work loads. 

So, while I enjoyed it overall, I'm also glad that I got it from the library, and was able to enjoy the parts that were engaging and skim over the parts that were not (a chapter on her cats and her cat psychic??). I still enjoy Vogue and following fashion, but I don't think we can expect great literature from this venue.

Weekend Review: Measure of a Man

The Measure of a Man / Martin Greenfield & Wynton Hall
Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, c2014.
234 p.

For my final read for a month of Menswear at the Sewcialists, I picked up this memoir from my library. It tells the story of Martin Greenfield (born Maximilian Grunfeld in Czechoslovakia), who survived Auschwitz and came to America, where he became a top-level tailor with a company providing suits to politicians, society people and tv & movies.

The first half of the book details his youth and his life pre & during WWII. It's powerful stuff, detailed, full of the horrors we know of the Holocaust but told in a straightforward manner. Martin alone out of his family survived, and part of the reason he continued on with his life was because his father had told him the last time they were together, that he had to live for the family if he survived.

His story is full of detail and casual descriptions of terrible things; he also is very open about his own feelings and longings to punish his captors. His personality comes through very strongly in both halves of the book, as someone who is a hustler and yet is always somehow innocently delighted at his luck.

Many reviews of this book mention the increasing name-dropping in the second part of the book, when Martin is talking about his tailoring company and all the celebrity clients he's made suits for. It is a bit noticeable after a while. However, I did feel that it was part of the overall arc of the book -- Martin is name-dropping in more of a child-like delight than a bragging sense, at least to my mind. Also, as someone reading this firstly because of the connections to tailoring and only secondly for the war story, perhaps my perspective was a bit different from some readers.

I felt that Martin was talking about his clients with pride for his success, for his growth from nothing to a success in the great land of America (and make no mistake, he thinks America is the tops, with no reservations. The only false note in the whole book for me was when he praises New York businessman Trump -- this was pre-2016 but still. He does come across as quite conservative in many ways.) 

I enjoyed the story of how he got into the tailoring trade in the first place, kind of accidentally when he first arrived to be with his family in America. He started as a floor runner but wanted to know everything about the business and the factory owner saw his initiative and taught him all he could. Martin took over the business many years later and is justifiably proud of the fact that their suits are all made in their New York factory with no shortcuts -- all hand sewn in the traditional manner. The description of the factory and the clients and the staff are all fascinating and I could only wish for more of it.

The book also includes a central portion of photos ranging from his childhood to current photos, which is a nice addition. He mentions at one point that the suit making he'd done for tv shows like Boardwalk Empire (they made all the suits for that one) or Blacklist gave him his first tv cameo as well: he and his factory appear in Episode 7 of Blacklist, which is conveniently on Netflix so I looked it up and you can really get a great view of a working space in a suit factory, complete with ancient tech, by watching the short clip!

Anyhow, this was a really interesting read and I'm glad I came across it while looking for dressmaking books in my library collection. I didn't even realize it had so much to do with wartime and the Nazi horror until I received it, but it was a well-composed and compelling story. His ghostwriter really seems to have captured a sense of his personality and shaped the story in a readable and fascinating way.