48+ of Your Favorite Books About Fashion

This Riot Recommendation is sponsored by Material Girls by Elaine Dimopoulos. In Marla Klein and Ivy Wilde’s world, teens are the gatekeepers of culture. A top fashion label employs sixteen-year-old Marla to dictate hot new clothing trends, while Ivy, a teen pop star, popularizes the garments that Marla approves. Both girls are pawns in a calculated but seductive system of corporate control, and both begin to question their world’s aggressive levels of consumption. Will their new “eco-chic” trend subversively resist and overturn the industry that controls every part of their lives? Smart, provocative, and entertaining, this thrilling page-turner for teens questions the cult like mentality of fame and fashion. Are you in or are you out?     ____________________ The fashion industry is a great deal like the book industry: it’s about art and creativity and standing out, but it’s also about money and marketing and fitting in. That tension can create ruthlessness, and a level of cut-throat competition you wouldn’t expect from an art-based business- and that tension makes for excellent reading. From compulsively readable fiction (hello, The Devil Wears Prada) to insider memoirs (the memoir of Grace Coddington from Vogue comes to mind), to how-tos, we wanted to know: what’s your favorite book about fashion? We rounded up your suggested titles and built you a nice list of 48+ great books about fashion. Get ready to work it while you read it. There’s something here for everyone, from fiction fans to those who like a non-fiction pick about how to rock your threads. 50 Dresses That Changed The World by Design Museum 101 Things I Learned In Fashion School by Alfred Cabrera Advanced Style by Ari Seth Cohen Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin by Andrew Wilson Bringing Home the Birkin by Michael Tonello Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie Confessions of a Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella Culture to Catwalk: How World Cultures Influence Fashion by Kristin Knox The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger Dreaming of Dior by Charlotte Smith Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography by Meryle Secrest Etiquette and Espionage (the entire Petticoat Protectorate series) by Gail Carriger Fashion Babylon by Imogen Edwards-Jones Fashion Victims by Vladimir Vagin and Emily Rodda The Fashionable Mind by Kennedy Fraser From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant by Alex Gilvarry Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick Grace by Grace Coddington In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner In My Shoes: A Memoir by Tamara Mellon Isabella Blow: A Life in Fashion by Lauren Crowe It’s So You by Michelle Tea Just Being Audrey by Margaret Cardillo The Ladies’ Paradise by Émile Zola Man Repeller: Seeking Love Finding Overalls by Leandra Medine Manolo Blahnik and the Tale of the Elves and the Shoemaker: A Fashion Fairy Tale Memoir by Camilla Morton Overdressed by Elizabeth Cline Patrick Demarchelier by Patrick Demarchelier and Anna Wintour Refinery29 Style Stalking by Piera Gelardi Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg Rookie Yearbook One (and Two and Three) by Tavi Gevinson Saree by Su Dharmapala The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean Sequins, Secrets, and Silver Linings series by Sophia Bennett The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown by Adena Halpern Tim Gunn’s Fashion Bible: The History of Everything in Your Closet by Tim Gunn To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out The World? by Lucy Siegle The Truth About Style by Stacy London Valentino: At the Emperor’s Table by André Leon Talley and Valentino Garavani A Vintage Affair by Isabell Wolff Vivienne Westwood by Claire Wilcox The Vogue Factor by Kirstie Clements What Not to Wear by Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine The Woman I Wanted to Be by Diane Von Furstenberg Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti Worn Stories by Emily Spivack