My Mother's Wedding Dress

February 27, 2006
A former British Vogue
editor turned novelist (Wish I May
) offers a stylish treatment of the significance of clothes to their owners and admirers. A black wedding dress belonging to Picardie's mother circa 1960 became the author's perfect little black dress 20 years later and serves as the elegant entrée to Picardie's narrative. Picardie devotes a chapter to each item: the wedding dress, cast off by her divorced mum, was added to the author's secondhand college wardrobe, a "rag-tag bundle of other people's identities"; a pair of plastic trousers, purchased in 1977, signified a transitory rebellion; a velvet jacket belonging to various relatives segues into a meditation on the frustrating elements of the unfinished story. Most poignant is the author's exploration of haunted clothing, seen in literary examples from Daphne du Maurier and Elizabeth Bowen, and exemplified in clothing favored by her terminally ill sister and abandoned in death. Picardie is amusingly digressive, moving from a discourse on the Gap's ability to bridge fashion and functionality to Zelda Fitzgerald's clothing memory as a grasp of her dwindling sanity. Picardie is also a terrific journalist, offering a shimmering chapter on the profane and sacred aspects of "scarlet women" and sharp interviews with Donnatella Versace and Karl Lagerfeld.

April 15, 2006
Former British "Vogue" editor Picardie ("If the Spirit Moves You: Life and Love After Death") has written a penetrating and absorbing book about the meaning of clothes in relation to their owners - memories and personal histories. Each chapter focuses on a particular item of clothing, a symbolic aspect of clothing (e.g., color), or a person (e.g., a designer). Some chapters are quite personal, such as those in which Picardie associates certain items with her deceased sister or reminisces about the black wedding dress of the book -s title, which she had incorporated into her college wardrobe. Others, like those on the colors white and red, ponder the symbolic associations of color to clothes and examine the attire of fictional and historical characters. There was the white dress worn by the reclusive Emily Dickinson, the sinister white of C.S. Lewis -s White Witch and Hans Christian Andersen -s Snow Queen, and the contrast of the scarlet red of adulteresses with the blood red of religious martyrs. Also interesting are interviews with designers Karl Lagerfeld and Donatella Versace. This engaging book is recommended for general collections as well as libraries collecting books on fashion." -Sandra Rothenberg, Framingham State Coll. Lib., MA"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2006
This is both a narrative devoted to fashion and its emotional underpinnings and the story of journalist-author (" Wish I May," 2004) Picardie's investigations into the lives of family and friends, including some poignant reminiscences about her late sister, Ruth. Simple concepts--the Coco Chanel little black dress--conjure up personal tales, numbered lists of to-dos/nots (how to wear red lipstick is one), and interviews with the famous and near celebrities. In fact, she prepares readers well for those conversations; in a face-to-face interview with designer Claude Montana, she prefaces an awkward, stilted monologue with notes about his muse and late wife model Wallis Franken, and her suicide--then broaches the forbidden question. Outfits resurrect intriguing memories--pleather trousers in 1977, a coveted feather coat, long-lasting clothes from the Gap, and a school uniform of blue-check gingham. Underneath fascinating interviews and forays into Versacedoms lies a wondrous tribute to her sister--and to the feelings that clothes evoke.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)