In My Fashion, Signed by Bettina Ballard
[Signed by Bettina Ballard] Ballard, Bettina. In My Fashion. Second Printing. 1960. Book is in very good condition; dust jacket is in very good minus condition—there is minor discoloration to the endpapers, and jacket shows minor tears, fraying to the spine ends, and fading to the spine.
Before being poached by Vogue, Diana Vreeland was the fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Her Vogue counterpart in that era was the author of this engaging memoir, Bettina Ballard. Ballard had been with the magazine since the 1934 when Edna Woolman Chase sought her out after enjoying Ballard’s lampoon of Cecil Beaton in an article for the New Yorker. Soon after, Ballard found herself living in France as American Vogue correspondent in residence, where she learned the intricacies of Parisian society and the complexities of the Paris fashion scene. Ballard died in middle-age just a year after this book was written, and perhaps she knew she had not long to live, as she writes with an unexpected candor, giving credit where its due but never where it is not. Particularly good are assessments of big names in fashion, including Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Christian Dior, Carmel Snow, Babe Paley, Valentina (Schlee), and Diana Vreeland.
“Nothing, no matter how extravagant, that Diana Vreeland ever says is nonsense. It is painting with words and gestures, and her gestures are often more imaginative than her words. She makes you see and feel and smell what she is talking about…. She is the one person in the American fashion field who understands with every bone in her body what the word elegant really means.”
--Bettina Ballard