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- Top 5 Fashion Reads: April 30, 2024
Welcome to the eleventh edition of Cross Couture, the fashion x culture newsletter. |
The clothes we wear have always been an ever-shifting portrait of society and we’re sitting down to explore how our daily outfits change as we come into contact with new societies, technologies, and stories. |
It’s Day 9 of my Spring Challenge!
As a reminder, this challenge means that either you get an email in your inbox 5 times per week until May 31st (which means I get a set of luxurious, vintage jammies) OR I have to donate $5 to a charity I hate for every week that I miss the goal.
Series #2: Top 5 Fashion Reads for the Cross Couturist.
Dior, Chanel, Anna Wintour and McQueen are awesome. But I want to explore some of the other fashion legends out there - so let’s chat about them.
Today’s pick: Walking with the Muses
Pat Cleveland, one of the first black supermodels during the sixties and seventies, suffuses her memoir with glamor across each page.
Not because each story is about parties or runway shows or haute couture - in fact, several are extremely dark, dealing with the Ku Klux Klan, broken marriages, and physical violence.
However, Pat has the knack of making each narrative a little softer, a little blurred, and with a bright spot of positivity, so even the heavy parts seem a little lighter.
With Pat’s own engaging narrative and fascinating stories of the who’s who of African-American entertainers included (Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, Eartha Kitt, and more), “Walking with the Muses” gives off a slightly grown-up princess story air: lots of trials and tribulations that our heroine climbs out of to land her happily ever after.
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xoxo,
Simran