Haute Novel
With Sex and the City making a Louboutin-shaped stamp on pop culture since the release of the film, there is the acknowledgment being made that fashion and books have been making a colourful splash for some time. Carrie, a fashionista at heart and a writer by trade, writes for women who wear lots of shoes, date lots of men and attend lots of fashion weeks.
The trend for blending what’s in vogue and street-corner style with highly readable prose is popular in non-fiction. At the recent Hay Festival the author India Knight took to the stage to discuss her recent lifestyle book , which follows the 2003 success of The Shops, an enthusiastic embrace of the best little boutiques, beauty parlours and designers - amongst many, many other things – in London. It is no less, extravagant yellow pages of everything chic in the city, ranging from the pricey to the downright expensive.
Tamsin Blanchard - once style director of the Telegraph magazine - has since responded to an interest in actual books about fashion, i.e., a well-rounded, well-drawn book that goes that bit further than a weekly column. Her book, Green is the New Black, takes an ecological stance on fashion, almost probing a mass political conscious: Where do we buy our cheap bargains from, and what is the real cost? With a forward by the model Lily Cole, it has one hand in a Chanel pocket and the other writing a worthy chapter.
A little fashion and fiction make exceedingly good gifts. Clothing or new shoes (particularly those that suggest a little opulence) are a welcome gesture, for you, or for someone else. However, to avoid what everybody else is wearing, try the Not on the High Street website (online shopping is often more diverse), for lots of lovely gift ideas – (note their cashmere sweaters). Or, for straight-up haute-couture items and gossip, browse the Thinkfashion.come website, which helpfully nudges you towards trends.
Finish up by doing your online shopping for books by India Knight or Tamsin Blanchard and similar at Asda: they serve up all in fiction and non-fiction and make buying books as easy as, well, getting your weekly shop.