Welcome back to Style File Friday friends! For Fall 2024, I am going to bring Style File Friday back on the first Friday of each month. (It can be tough to get access to the photos needed for fashion history posts to be truly helpful, so hopefully a modified schedule will help.) And for the first Style File Friday back, we are chatting about one of my favourite books that I read this summer. If you don’t have Empresses of Seventh Avenue by Nancy MacDonnell on your to-read list already, read on…
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an eARC and an Advanced Listening Copy.
Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion, Nancy MacDonell
Calvin Klein. Ralph Lauren. Donna Karan. Halston. Marc Jacobs. Tom Ford. Michael Kors. Tory Burch. Today, American designers are some of the biggest names in fashion, yet before World War II, they almost always worked anonymously. The industry, then centered on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, had always looked overseas for “inspiration”―a polite phrase for what was often blatant copying―because style, as all the world knew, came from Paris.
But when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, the capital of fashion was cut off from the rest of the world. The story of the chaos and tragedy that followed has been told many times―but how it directly affected American fashion is largely unknown.
Defying the naysayers, New York-based designers, retailers, editors, and photographers met the moment, turning out clothes that were perfectly suited to the American way of life: sophisticated, modern, comfortable, and affordable. By the end of the war, “the American Look” had been firmly established as a fresh, easy elegance that combined function with style. But none of it would have happened without the influence and ingenuity of a small group of women who have largely been lost to history.
Why You Should Read This…
August was a difficult reading month for me, at least at the start. I could not connect with anything I was reading and everything was just “not it”. (That is a me problem, not a comment on the books.) However, Empresses of Seventh Avenue was the exception- I read this in one sitting!
This is a fast and very readable history of WWII/post-WWII American fashion, and I really enjoyed it. MacDonell is a great writer and makes the topic very approachable. She covers the major industry figures, like Carmel Snow, Diana Vreeland, and Claire McCardell, and the major events (like the Battle of Versailles) quickly. Her explanations of the designers are succinct but very useful.
MacDonnell makes the topic accessible for all readers no matter how much or little you know about American fashion history. (A lot of fashion history books will require a decent amount of prior knowledge.) This is not the book for the person writing their PhD on social influence in the fashion industry but it is a delightful and entertaining intro book, which I think makes it far more useful book for more of us!
Gail Shalan’s narration of the audiobook was wonderful. Non-fiction narrators can sometimes come across as uninterested but Shalan’s narration was never bored or dry, only further bringing these women to life.
My one slight qualm is that there weren’t any photographs in the ebook, but there may be some in the final book!
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Is Empresses of Seventh Avenue by Nancy MacDonnell on your to-read list?
Cheers,
The Historian
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