This must be among the most beautiful books in my library. The edition is amazingly pretty! A jacket of marbled pink paper with dress sketches is wrapped around a cover decorated with lovely underwear sketches! The paper inside is thick, in cream color, and the illustrations by Zoe Sadokierski are a dream!
I bought this book in Sheffield two years ago, where I went to participate in the annual BAVS conference. BAVS stands for British Association for Victorian Studies, and the conference each year is THE event for Victorianists from all over the world. I had saved painfully in order to go, and have not been able to find the money to go since. So the 2012 visit was special, and I save all that happened in my memory treasure-box. I remember buying this pretty pink book from Waterstones in Orchard Square, a most beautiful bookshop in a most beautiful place!
I think that A Life in Frocks is a must-read for anyone interested to write a fashion memoir, because Kelly Doust deftly shows how you can write about your life and experiences in relation to clothes. Events in Doust's life are highlighted by clothes and vice versa. I would love to buy any fashion memoir she writes!
(Kelly Doust also writes about sewing, crafts and upcycling, in books and in her website, kellydoust.wordpress.com).
One annoying thing with A Life in Frocks is the writer's insistence on telling us about her boyfriend all the time. Wherever she goes, whatever she does, we must be told that she was with a boyfriend, and the boyfriend was doing this and that. Beauty writers will speak about their boyfriends, of course, and there is nothing wrong with that; I very much enjoyed reading the occasional comment about the boyfriend in, say, The Goddess Guide and The Goddess Experience. I am not a hundred per cent sure why it annoyed me so much in this book. I think it is the tone in which it was all written; if we weren't told that there was a boyfriend around, the experience would lose something of its value.
Other than this, the book is perfect!
Have a great start to the week and be well! xxx
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