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Amy Odell
Positive The Financial Times (UK) A takedown biography of Wintour would have been easy, and Odell resists the temptation, seeking to paint a more nuanced portrait without any input from Wintour herself ... But the book lacks a strong point of view. Is Wintour a tyrant who should have been let go from Vogue years ago, or an effective boss whose leadership methods would be readily praised in male form? Odell, an opinionated writer, is curiously reticent on these and other questions ... Wintour obsessives will no doubt revel in the details of her diet (whole-milk lattes, rare steaks, caprese salads without the tomatoes), and management style. But as for the woman behind the manicured bob and dark sunglasses? The mystery remains intact.
Edmund White
Mixed The Financial Times It’s page-turning stuff. But while the plot holds, the narratorial voice doesn’t. Within a few dozen pages, Yvonne’s East Texas twang evaporates and the sentences become shorter, plainer — sounding, to borrow a phrase of early-Yvonne’s, \'as bland as Quaker Oats\' ... White, whose own parents hailed from America’s cowboy state, never seems wholly at ease writing from the point of view of a Texas debutante. At times she is painted as stupid and unobservant, with a poor command of French (she says, at one point, that she never learns to read it); at other moments, she is an astute critic of manners, able to parse complex social nuances via her \'exquisite, idiomatic\' and perfectly accented second language ... And although her story is written in the style of a first-person memoir compiled late in life, Yvonne has an implausible memory for mundane details, recounting course by course the tasteless dinners her French landlady, the poor but aristocratic Mme de Castiglione, serves on consecutive evenings during her study year in Paris ... an imaginative, entertaining novel seasoned with penetrating social observation, as one would expect from this beady observer of US and French society. White has consummate control over plot, pace and narrative tension, and if the novel never quite reaches the heights of his greatest books, it makes for a superior sort of beach read.
André Leon Talley
Positive The Financial Times ... the tale of an African-American man’s spectacular rise from the segregationist Jim Crow South to the hallowed halls of Vogue — and his eventual fall ... Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/7f0c7cb4-abe7-11ea-a766-7c300513fe47 That Talley, now 71, achieved his dream against all odds, through sheer force of intellect, personality, hard work and a daring sense of style, is remarkable. His memoir should feel like a triumph. Instead, it reads like a tragedy — a warning not to measure your worth by the monogram on your luggage, or to mistake your professional contacts for your friends ... Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/7f0c7cb4-abe7-11ea-a766-7c300513fe47 It also captures a bygone world: one in which everyone in fashion knows everybody else, where one is expected to know what a martingale back is to a Balenciaga one-seamed coat, and where black American Express cards are handed out to your closest friends. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/7f0c7cb4-abe7-11ea-a766-7c300513fe47 Talley reveres and upholds fashion’s social hierarchy, even when he is no longer peering down from the top. Titles of nobility, grand displays of wealth, his seat at a fashion show, the brand label on a suit — all impress him deeply ... Talley remains frequently discreet on behalf of the powerful, Wintour included ... What is apparent to the reader — but not to Talley — is that he failed to change with the times ... Talley likens fashion to war; his story is one of survival. He might have permeated the inner sanctum. Yet the spoils never seem to outweigh the sacrifice.