Fashionistas [Paperback]

Lynn Messina (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Delightfully witty. -- New York Daily News

Fashionistas has genuine style.... Forget about simply telling the boss to go to hell; Messina's accomplished something funnier and darker. -- Time Out New York

Messina's tale is a hip and funny parody of trendy magazines and the people who toil at them. -- Booklist

Well-written, funny and sharp. -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

From the Publisher

Life at Fashionista magazine can be a real bitch. Especially when you work for one.

Vig Morgan finally worked her way out of the assistant-for-the-bitch-from-hell trenches only to get stuck in a sea of editors. But Vig isn't like the other associate editors at the aggressively hip and overwhelmingly current Fashionista magazine. For one thing, she couldn't care less which star wore which designer to which party. Sure, she's clever and witty -- and just as ambitious as the next over qualified underpaid underling, but she would never get drawn into a plot to depose the evil editor-in-chief. Or would she?

Jump with Vig into the choppy waters of scheming, backstabbing, free speech, flirtation and fashion, as the lackeys at the bottom of the masthead band together to take down the queen at the top, with some unexpected -- but not necessarily unpleasant -- results.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 286 pages
• Publisher: Red Dress Ink (January 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0373895445
• ISBN-13: 978-0373895441
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,351,102 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lynn Messina grew up on Long Island and studied English at Washington University in St. Louis. She has worked at The Museum of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center for Media), TV Guide, In Style, Rolling Stone, Fitness, Self and a host of wonderful magazines that have long since disappeared. She mourns the death of print journalism in New York City, where she lives with her husband and son. She is author of five novels, including the best-selling Fashionistas, which has been translated into 15 languages and is in development as a feature film.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fashionable!, December 6, 2004

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fashionistas (Paperback)

"Fashionista" is little more and little less than your average fluffy chick-lit book: A single smart gal in a job-from-hell, some quirky coworkers and plenty of witty little observations about whatever business Single Smart Gal is in. It's a guilty pleasure with a literate twist and a likably wry main character.

Glossy magazine Fashionista is like "Seinfeld" -- it's about nothing. All they do is retread celebrity fashion of the moment, check out celebrity fashion of the past, and just about anything vapid involving celebrities. (Seeing a trend here?) Vig Morgan got involved in this magazine for the glamour, but finds that it's sadly lacking. Iron-rod editor-in-chief Jane McNeill is intent on keeping it vapid and celebrity-driven, even though her staff yearns to give the mag a little substance.

Then a rebellion starts brewing in the ranks. Vig finds herself turned into the linchpin of a conspiracy to get controversial fashion artist Gavin Marshall and his Gilding the Lily (or, to be blunter, "Jesus in Drag" -- Jesus statues in designer women's garb) exhibit into the magazine. But will the uproar be enough to overturn Jane?

Ever since the publication of "The Nanny Diaries," there have been a slew of my-job-is-hell-and-my-boss-is-a-demon books. "Fashionistas" manages to avoid the pitfalls of most books like that. The biggest pit that it DOES fall into is the not-a-relationship that Vig has with the mysterious Alex Keller -- it really adds nothing to the book, and just seems to take up pages that could be devoted to catty power struggles.

Those catty power struggles are what make "Fashionista" so delicious at times. Vig's deadpan recounting of the quirky workplace characters is fun to read. While their oddities sometimes strain believability, they always manage to seem like people who could actually exist. And Messina does a decent job of lampooning the art world (Jesus statues with women's designer clothes), the fashion world, and magazines in general. Since she herself writes for magazines, it somehow doesn't seem surprising.

Vig actually seems like a smart, interesting female lead. She doesn't whine constantly about her weight, her boyfriend, and grimly takes it in stride when she has to cover Cate Blanchett's "curly" phase. Sort-of-boyfriend Alex is a nonentity, and so are quite a few of Vig's coworkers. Maya is a good sidekick for Vig: She's an emotional mess with unpublished novels, a nasty ex, and many stages of grief.

Lynn Messina's take on the fashion world is a nice beach-read. Or if you don't have a beach handy, then "Fashionista" is merely a pleasant light read with plenty of cattiness, fashion and inter-magazine power struggles.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fash Bash, December 8, 2004

By 

Lissa Bennett - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fashionistas (Paperback)

Super fun. The rapport and the cocktails of Sex in the City but wittier. That book that you wish someone would recommend to you when you're online or in a bookstore and not sure what to get. Excited it's going to be a movie - can't wait to see what they do with the battling chief editors Jane and Marguerite.

There were a whole bunch of reviews out comparing Fashionistas (about In Style) with that Prada book (about Vogue) and saying how great Fashionistas was and how bad the other one was - so I bought Fash. And they were absolutely right - Lynn Messina can actually write. And can actually make you laugh out loud.

Great book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really good read, December 8, 2004

By 

D. B. Levy "LadyMonster" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fashionistas (Paperback)

Smart, funny, memorable.
This book is just thoroughly enjoyable all the way through. It's got a bunch of twists and turns that one wouldn't expect in a standard piece of "Chick Lit", which just goes to prove that this particular book transcends the genre!