A Year in High Heels: The Girl's Guide to Everything from Jane Austen to the A-list [Paperback]

Camilla Morton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2008

From rocking red shoes in summer to perfecting your postholiday thank-you notes, A Year in High Heels is the ultimate style guide for all fashion-forward females. Fashion journalist and bestselling author Camilla Morton has gathered together an eclectic collection of inspiring suggestions, sensible advice, and surprising how-tos to guide every glamour girl through the year—with witty, smart, and fun tips on how to walk the red carpet, curate an exhibition, blog your way to fame, spice up your public speaking, and make even the mundane magical.

Gisele Bündchen, Diane von Furstenberg, Matthew Williamson, and other fashion icons share secret tips on where to find inspiration; while Dita Von Teese, Anya Hindmarch, and Christian Lacroix explain how to tease, how to go green, and how to appreciate opera. Filled with unique challenges and infinitely fun ideas, this is the guide to a guaranteed extraordinary year!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Despite a little help from friends in high fashion places, including a foreword written by Manolo Blahnik, Morton's follow-up to her debut book How to Walk in High Heels is an unsuccessful pastiche of historical facts, shoe styles, recipes and juxtaposing tips like How to be A-list and How to say something meaningful. The book is arranged in calendar form, with each month including cultural tips and information and a Muse of the Month profile of famous women like Jane Austen and Cleopatra. While trying to appeal to both sides of the Atlantic, the London writer misses the mark by trying too hard to be all-inclusive, especially where holidays are concerned. The sheer volume of historical facts—including when Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross, when Disneyland opened in America and when Mata Hari was born—seem like they were compiled purely to fill in the bits between international dispatches from famous fashionistas like Giorgio Armani and Diane von Furstenberg and are out of place next to a section titled How to moonwalk the Michael Jackson way. B&w illus. (Nov.)
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About the Author

Camilla Morton is a London-based fashion writer and the author of the international bestseller How to Walk in High Heels, which has been translated into twenty languages worldwide. She was the runway reporter for Vogue.com, covering all international and couture collections. Morton has written for several magazines, newspapers, and blogs, including Time magazine’s Style and Design supplement, W magazine, and Harper’s Bazaar, both in the U.S. and the U.K., and collaborated with several high-end fashion houses. This is her fourth book.

Manolo BlahnÍk, whose career spans more than thirty years, is one of the world’s most celebrated and imaginative footwear designers. His shoes have enchanted an international set of adoring and loyal devotees around the globe. Born in the Canary Islands and later educated in Geneva, he moved in 1965 to Paris, where he intended a career in theatre design. On a visit to New York in 1970, he met with the legendary editor in chief of American Vogue, Diana Vreeland, who told him, “Do shoes.” He has been doing so expertly ever since—on the runway, the red carpet, and in every girl’s wildest dreams.

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (November 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061673609
• ISBN-13: 978-0061673603
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,070,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Ghandi to Heidi Klum... From NYC to Egypt... This book has it all!, February 9, 2010

By 

Jessica "Jessica" (Grand Haven, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Year in High Heels: The Girl's Guide to Everything from Jane Austen to the A-list (Paperback)

This intriguing style will walk you through unique trivia and dates as you progress through the Calendar. You will become a queen of trivia, while also learning how to plan your wedding, wear the best style, begin your own art collection, and succeed at work! Though this book certainly does not focus solely on how to help YOU, rather it inspires you with the life and times of Ghandi, Shakespeare, Picasso, A.A. Milne, Greta Garbo... You name it. This book has it all. Enjoy!

5.0 out of 5 stars A fabulous Year In High Heels, January 1, 2011

By 

AudreyH - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Year in High Heels: The Girl's Guide to Everything from Jane Austen to the A-list (Paperback)

Just like a great pair of heels - I loved this book. I got it for Christmas and it's the best stocking filler. I pick it up every time I walk past it and dip in and out of the pages reading it's lovely fashion and cultural anecdotes and tips. Great idea for a present.

7 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Looking through the Net is cheaper, August 14, 2009

By 

D.E. Wray (Tokyo) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Year in High Heels: The Girl's Guide to Everything from Jane Austen to the A-list (Paperback)

I write this review on 14 August 2009. I read four or five books per week, and this is the worst book I have read this year. I bought it on sale at a fifth the list price, and I wasted my money. The book saddened me because it is such a waste of paper.

There are many kinds of bad books: badly written ones, poorly researched ones, poorly thought out ones, and even poorly proofread ones. This book is bad because (a) the author has nothing to say, has no points to make at all and (b) it seems to comprise nothing but a bunch of rewritten Wikipedia entries. Please stay away from this.

The hundred or so pages I read I read while waiting in a government office for about four hours. Eventually, I put the book down and concentrated on watching, again and again, a video on immigration being looped, with the sound off, on a video screen with a bad tube.

As far as I can gather, the book is a guide to passing for cultured or what have you when you are both undereducated and too lazy to do anything about it.

Meanwhile, I'm reading Life Of John Maynard Keynes and Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology (Music/Culture). Read either of those (or just about anything else, including newspaper supermarket circulars) instead of this.