Designing Male, Signed by Howard Greer
[Signed by Howard Greer] Greer, Howard. Designing Male, A Nebraska Farm Boy’s Adventures in Hollywood and with the International Set. Later Printing. 1951. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition—there is some foxing to the pages and the jacket shows minor edge tears—a beautiful copy. Book is inscribed on the flyleaf, “For Marjorie Graham, Sincerely, Howard Greer, 8/27/’51.”
Be prepared to be swept away by this fast-moving and amusing memoir from the couturier who began life as a humble Midwestern farm boy but left it as Hollywood royalty and fashion sophisticate. His first position in was working for the designer Lady Duff Gordon, the sister of romance novelist Elinor Glyn. Seemingly everywhere, Greer co-hosted a tea for Queen Marie of Roumania (that was crashed by Elsie de Wolfe and Elsa Maxwell), played a prank on his mother with the assistance of Greta Garbo, and hired Edith Head to work at Paramount even though she admitted to presenting fraudulent examples of her work.
“The most elegant Chanel dress of the early twenties was a wash-out on the screen. When you strip color and sound and the third dimension from moving object, you have to make up for the loss with dramatic black-and-white contrasts and enriched surfaces.”
--Howard Greer