Customer Reviews

Fashion Babylon - From High Fashion to High Street

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I tore through this book (as part of my celebration of Fashion Week in New York.) It is liberally peppered with "blind items" and some not-so-blind gossip -- I loved Tom Ford complaining to the Gucci PR firm that they had to find a way to stop Posh Beckham from buying and wearing his clothes! Is this great literature? Of course not. But is it an interesting look behind the curtain at the fashion industry, written in a novel form? Absolutely!

I've been hooked on nearly all of Imogen Edwards-Jones & "Anonymous"'s books for a while now. First was Hotel & Air Babylon, but now she's starting to show that yes, she hit the nail on the head with a good thing, but she's lost it. After reading this and her most recent book, Beach Babylon, in quick succession, I found myself very disenchanted with the whole series. Beach Babylon I thought would have been ideal after coming back from a beach holiday, but she aimed too high, by setting it on an expensive island resort, which really, the book is not aimed at the kind of person who would go there.

Fashion Babylon - where do I start? It's everything you already know about the fashion industry. The drugs, the stick thin models, the clothes that are "in" one month, and which you won't be seen dead in the next month. Skinny jeans seem to be sticking around for the moment, but for how long? Normally when I get into a fashion, they go out of fashion. And everything's "vintage". And then there's the celebrity name dropping. There's not a page that goes by without Kate Moss or someone else being dropped in there.

Unlike Air & Hotel, which were set over 24 hours, and Beach, which was set over a week, Fashion Babylon was set over six months, and it's a very tedious six months. Imogen did well setting Air & Hotel over a period of 24 hours, as they're fast paced, and barely leave you any time to think. Fashion Babylon is set over six months because it's that amount of time that you need to get ideas for your next 'collection', to getting it onto the catwalk. Interlaced with everything you can possibly imagine, from frills to pink satin, it's confusing, and certainly not aimed at someone like me, but made out to look like it is.

I have to say, as much as I like Imogen Edwards-Jones, I'm going to give her Babylon books a rest for now, and try some of her other books - which seem to be all about her fertility and babies. Funny that.

Chances are you are reading this book because you are into fashion. The chances are, also, that you already heard or read most of the rumors in this book, this book just puts a story around them. A hodgepodge of random fashion and model facts. The interesting part of the novel, just seeing a designer's life and cycle of building a collection to runway.

FASHION BABYLON: LOOKING UP THE SKIRTS OF THE WORLD'S MOST GLAMOROUS INDUSTRY questions the foundations of what is fashion and what is fashionable, from what makes a fashion trend - and changes it - to how supermodels evolve, how designers rise to fame, and who makes money. To achieve these insights, six months of a designer's life explore how a fashion concept is put together and tested, from idea into the shops and magazine covers. It's the behind-the-scenes insights of an industry and art libraries - as well as general-interest collections where fashion is of interest - must have this.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

this is a quite interesting book that have lost of gossip, and some time inoformation in side~ let u to know more about the market.

I purchased this book because I will be going to fashion school soon and also because I wanted an idea of the real nitty gritty that they don't talk about in class. I don't know many of the "players" in the fashion industry so I sometimes found it hard to relate to the gossip and it wasn't totally shocking to find out how much coke the models do, but it was crazy to find out that some men turn gay to get ahead.

This book is set over in Europe so most of the language/slang is from there, people say things like "fag" for a cigarrete and "bloke" for friend but I quickly got used to it. A good thing about this book is that it really shows how the strings are pulled and how certain trends are made, also I would definitely reccomend this to any aspiring fashion designer because it will show how hard it really is to be a designer and it's not just sitting around drawing up cool designs. All in all I enjoyed reading the book, but the fashion industry is probably no more shocking than the movie or music industries. Although it might have been more shocking if I knew more of the names who the gossip was about.

Written in novel form this is a insider look at the high fashion industry. And an industry it is. There's something very subtle that makes one simple little black dress cost $5,000 and one almost identical at WalMart that might be $50. And there's something that makes one girl get paid a small fortune for wearing that $5,000 dress down a runway while dozens of very similar looking girls are walking around outside in the WalMart dress merely walking to work. And strangely enough, that WalMart dress just may have been a $5,000 dress a very short time ago, walking down a runway in front of cameras that were waiting to send pictures to China, Korea or elsewhere.

The story here is partly credited to Anonymous, supposedly a top of the line designer in England, but one who has never quite made it across the Atlantic.

It's a fascinating look at an indistry, a lifestyle that most of us will never touch.

I really enjoyed this book. I just finished it about 3 minutes ago. Her writing was informative, yet comical. I found myself laughing out loud in some cases. Alexander was great, I loved all the gossip and behind-the-scenes stories. So fun.

My only complaint was the redundancies of fashion cliches. Every chapter had someone getting hammered, doing a line of coke, SMOKING, or blah blah blah. I actually found it quite annoying. It seemed to be gl;amortized, which I thought was quite irresponsible and frankly, pathetic.

On a lighter note, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in fashion. However, you'll find yourself wondering who the heck this "Anonymous" designer is. It drove me crazy.

This story is a peak behind the scenes of the fashion industry. It mixes real events and people with fictionalized characters to make the story flow as smoothly as a Prada silk dress. Fashionistas will recognize every step on the story year.

I've read several books in the "Babylon" series, and found this book to be a very entertaining and interesting read.

As an aspiring fashion designer about to begin a college degree in Fashion, and assuming the information in the book is true, I found this read to be very informative. It offers insights on how the industry operates, how everyone in it interacts/does business/socializes, how a small fashion house runs, and how a collection is conceptualized, designed, created and put on the runway. It really paints an excellent picture of what a designer must do to create a successful collection and maintain a successful label while offering funny celebrity and fashion gossip.

True or not, it's still an entertaining read, especially to those who love fashion.