The Clothes On Their Backs

The Clothes On Their Backs
Author: Linda Grant
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2008-11-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439150052

Orange Prize winner and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008, Linda Grant has created an enchanting portrait of a woman who, having endured unbearable loss, finds solace in the family secrets her estranged uncle reveals. In vivid and supple prose, Grant subtly constructs a powerful story of family, love, and the hold the past has on the present. Vivien Kovacs, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from the world by her timid Hungarian refugee parents, who conceal the details of their history and shy away from any encounter with the outside world. She learns how to navigate British society from an eccentric cast of neighbors -- including a fading ballerina, a cartoonist, and a sad woman who wanders the city and teaches Vivien to be beautiful. She loses herself in books and reinvents herself according to her favorite characters, but it is through clothes that she ultimately defines herself. Against her father's wishes, she forges a relationship with her uncle, a notorious criminal and slum landlord, who, in his old age, wants to share his life story. As he exposes the truth about her family's past Vivien learns how to be comfortable in her own skin and how to be alive in the world. Grant is a spectacularly humanizing writer whose morally complex characters explore the line between selfishness and self-preservation.

The Clothes On Their Backs

The Clothes On Their Backs
Author: Linda Grant
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2008-11-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439143196

A powerful story of family, love, and the hold the past has on the present. A woman, having endured unbearable loss, finds solace in the family secrets her estranged uncle reveals.

The Clothes On Their Backs

The Clothes On Their Backs
Author: Linda Grant
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2008-10-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 074811081X

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sándor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home? This is a novel about survival - both banal and heroic - and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live. Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, The Clothes on Their Backs is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all.

Only the Clothes on Her Back

Only the Clothes on Her Back
Author: Laura F. Edwards
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2022
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197568572

Only the Clothes on Her Back illuminates the ways in which women, men of color, and poor people used textiles as a form of property that enabled them to gain access to the legal system and to exercise political power.

Ninety Percent of Everything

Ninety Percent of Everything
Author: Rose George
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2013-08-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0805092633

Revealing the workings and dangers of freight shipping, the author sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore to present an eye-opening glimpse into an overlooked world filled with suspect practices, dubious operators, and pirates.

The Clothes on Our Backs

The Clothes on Our Backs
Author: Anna Nyburg
Publisher: Vallentine Mitchell
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2021-10-20
Genre: Clothing trade
ISBN: 9781912676910

Jews had long been active in the clothing trade in Europe, developing new production and retail methods and excelling as designers. However, in the UK clothes production was mostly conservative and design was not a concept. What happened to these Jews in the clothing industry after the Nazis came to power in 1933, bent on ridding Germany of Jews? Many found asylum in Britain, where soon the refugee owners of Kangol and other firms were employing thousands of British workers at a time of dreadfully high unemployment. And when war broke out, it was Kangol who made the berets for the British army and other forces. British companies started to recognise what the refugees could offer: Pringle of Scotland for one could see the benefits of hiring an Austrian refugee designer, their first. It was he who thought up the twinset which became a huge commercial success. The refugees brought new technology, new display methods, a different attitude to export and much more. It was no wonder then that by the end of the war the refugee clothiers were recognised as having made a disproportionate contribution to the economy Just one who was honoured was Miki Sekers, who was made an MBE in 1955 for services to the fashion industry. Additionally, to show their gratitude to the land that had saved their lives and given them hope, several became major patrons to the British arts scene. Harry Djanogly, supplier of clothing to M &S and a major donor to medical and educational projects also, was knighted for his services to philanthropy in 1993. Here Anna Nyburg tells their stories.

Women in Clothes

Women in Clothes
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 804
Release: 2014-09-04
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0698189825

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Women in Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities—famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old—on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives. It began with a survey. The editors composed a list of more than fifty questions designed to prompt women to think more deeply about their personal style. Writers, activists, and artists including Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Kalpona Akter, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Tavi Gevinson, Miranda July, Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, and Molly Ringwald answered these questions with photographs, interviews, personal testimonies, and illustrations. Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, or function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women’s style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.

Other People's Clothes

Other People's Clothes
Author: Calla Henkel
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2022-02-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385547366

Two American ex-pats obsessed with the Amanda Knox trial find themselves at the nexus of murder and celebrity in glittering late-aughts Berlin in this “hugely entertaining” (The New York Times) debut with a wicked sense of humor. “Darkly funny, psychologically rich and utterly addictive... [a] harrowing tale of twisty female friendships, slippery identity and furtive secrets.” —Megan Abbott, best-selling author of The Turnout Hoping to escape the pain of the recent murder of her best friend, art student Zoe Beech finds herself studying abroad in the bohemian capital of Europe—Berlin. Rudderless, Zoe relies on the arrangements of fellow exchange student Hailey Mader, who idolizes Warhol and Britney Spears and wants nothing more than to be an art star. When Hailey stumbles on a posting for a high-ceilinged, prewar sublet by well-known thriller writer Beatrice Becks, the girls snap it up. They soon spend their nights twisting through Berlin’s club scene and their days hungover. But are they being watched? Convinced that Beatrice intends to use their lives as inspiration for her next novel, Hailey vows to craft main-character-worthy personas. They begin hosting a decadent weekly nightclub in the apartment, finally gaining the notoriety they’ve been craving. Everyone wants an invitation to “Beatrice’s.” As the year unravels and events spiral out of control, they begin to wonder whose story they are living—and how it will end. Other People’s Clothes brilliantly illuminates the sometimes dangerous intensity of female friendships, as well as offering an unforgettable window into millennial life and the lengths people will go to in order to eradicate emotional pain.

The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book

The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book
Author: Joan Wiener Bordow
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2008-09-17
Genre: Crafts & Hobbies
ISBN: 1628731257

Here is the straight-up dope on how to make your own clothing. With or without patterns, machines, or fancy materials—anyone can do it! Got some old clothes that you love and that fit well? Use them as patterns for new ones. Want something new and spectacular, something that fits right along where your head is moving? Cut up, remodel, add on, and let your old stuff evolve! Readers will embrace the step-by-step illustrations, clear and encouraging prose, and timeless collection of clothes—from skirts and pants to dresses, a waistcoat, and even a teeny-weeny bikini. The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book promises to be both an indispensable resource and a much-noticed collectible on every hipster’s bookshelf.

The First Book of Fashion

The First Book of Fashion
Author: Ulinka Rublack
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2021-02-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1474249906

This captivating book reproduces arguably the most extraordinary primary source documents in fashion history. Providing a revealing window onto the Renaissance, they chronicle how style-conscious accountant Matthäus Schwarz and his son Veit Konrad experienced life through clothes, and climbed the social ladder through fastidious management of self-image. These bourgeois dandies' agenda resonates as powerfully today as it did in the sixteenth century: one has to dress to impress, and dress to impress they did. The Schwarzes recorded their sartorial triumphs as well as failures in life in a series of portraits by illuminists over 60 years, which have been comprehensively reproduced in full color for the first time. These exquisite illustrations are accompanied by the Schwarzes' fashion-focussed yet at times deeply personal captions, which render the pair the world's first fashion bloggers and pioneers of everyday portraiture. The First Book of Fashion demonstrates how dress – seemingly both ephemeral and trivial – is a potent tool in the right hands. Beyond this, it colorfully recaptures the experience of Renaissance life and reveals the importance of clothing to the aesthetics and every day culture of the period. Historians Ulinka Rublack's and Maria Hayward's insightful commentaries create an unparalleled portrait of sixteenth-century dress that is both strikingly modern and thorough in its description of a true Renaissance fashionista's wardrobe. This first English translation also includes a bespoke pattern by TONY award-winning costume designer and dress historian Jenny Tiramani, from which readers can recreate one of Schwarz's most elaborate and politically significant outfits.