To endure those chilly nights ahead, JC Report has compiled a selection of
indispensable classics, as well as to-be-released reading list to
keep fashionable bookworms cozy. The book that has created the most
controversy this month is indisputably The Beautiful Boy by Germaine
Greer. Causing a stir is the author’s claim that men and boys have always
been the world’s ultimate pinups. Greer supports her theory by presenting
works that celebrate male beauty, through the heady mix of the history of
art, literature, and photography. No stranger to all of these disciplines
and a veteran champion of beauty as Vogue‘s creative Director is Grace
Coddington, whose legacy is captured in Grace: Thirty Years of Fashion at
Vogue. The divine illustrated cover portrait of Coddington by Michael
Roberts is incentive enough to buy the book. Other coffee table essentials
include the delightful Boutique, in which the author Marnie Fogg unravels
the rise of the boutique by using lively journalism and endearingly quirky
imagery; and Ossie Clark by Judith Watt, the first biographical book
published on the London designer who pretty much embodied the swinging
sixties. For anyone seeking to indulge in something a little more
substantial, Roland Barthes‘ classic, The Fashion System is key, as is
Elisabeth Wilson’s much-awaited new edition of Adorned in Dreams: Fashion
and Modernity, as well as the second edition of Fashion as Communication
by Malcolm Barnard. These three academic treasures share shelf space with
yet another rich must-have title: Fashion Foundations, Early Writings on
Fashion and Dress. Here one can revel in vintage essays on fashion by
highbrow heavyweights including Montaigne,

Georg Simmel and
Herbert Blumer. Assouline, the couturier of book publishing, has a couple of
interesting titles to look out for: Tennis Fashion by Diane Elisabeth
Poirier, explores the intriguing history of tennis style and glory; and
Dreams Through the Glass celebrates the innovative window displays of
Linda Fargo for Bergdorf Goodman in New York. Didn’t somebody say that
staying in was the new going out? Is reading then the new sleeping?

- Emma Holmqvist
Photo: Tennis Fashion by Diane Elisabeth Poirier