Model, Signed to Norman and Norris Mailer
[Signed to Norman and Norris Mailer] Gross, Michael. Model, The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. First English Edition. 1995. Book is in good condition; dust jacket is in good minus condition—pages have yellowed due to age, and the jacket has fading to the spine and a large repaired tear to the front cover. This book is signed to Norman and Norris Church Mailer. It is inscribed on the title page, “To Norris and Norman—Truth is stranger than fashion! Amicably, Michael Gross.”
This anecdote-packed social history of modeling begins at what was what we now know to have been its heyday, the 1990s, when the supermodel phenomena was in full bloom. It then returns to modeling’s modest origins and progresses forward, with much on the delicate ecosystem (ego-system?) between models, designers, agencies, photographers, and stylists. It includes profiles and interviews with all the important models. Norris Church Mailer, to whom this copy was inscribed, was in the business herself, signed to the Wilhelmina.
“The model business remains, as it has always been, a seething morass of beauty and money, grace and envy, sensuality and lust, yearning and backstabbing, glamour, greed, and glory beyond measure.”
--Michael Gross