What are some of the best books you’ve read about the fashion industry?
— Liz Logan, Chicago
A. Some of my favorites are Teri Agins’s “The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Business Forever,” Marylin Bender’s 1967 book “The Beautiful People,” Caroline Rennolds Milbank’s three books about couture, “New York Fashion: The Evolution of American Style” (an excellent record of well-known and obscure companies), “Couture: The Great Designers” and “Couture Accessories.” I kind of like James Brady’s “Superchic,” and Elizabeth Hawes “Fashion is Spinach” is funny. Kennedy Fraser’s “The Fashionable Mind: Reflections on Fashion, 1970-1982” offers some great criticism, and I recommend Kohle Yohannan’s new book on the Russian-born designer Valentina, “Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity.” I think the most useful fashion book I own is Aileen Ribeiro’s “Dress and Morality,” which chronicles two and a half centuries of indignation directed at everyone from revealing Romans to hippies.
