I Actually Wore This: Clothes We Can't Believe We Bought

There are a multitude of adjectives that this reviewer has used to describe books of this genre but in my memory there has been one that’s glaringly absent, and it is only three letters . . . the word is FUN! Tom Coleman has successfully delivered a fashion book that is lighthearted, engaging, and certainly chuckle worthy—in a good way.

Just as the titles suggests the book focuses on those sartorial errors in judgment that each and every one of us has made since we began buying our own clothes. Part of the charm of the book is that Coleman doesn’t solely focus on members of the fashion community to relate their “what was I thinking” moment but instead offers a huge cross section of men, women, and children who openly admit to their mistakes and mostly in a very humorous self-effacing way.

It is with this broad spectrum of interviewees that Coleman achieves what others have only aspired to and that is a fashion book that neither preaches, regurgitates, nor for that matter educates its reader. Coleman’s target audience is the reader who has a sense of humor about all things fashion including themselves; imagine an entertaining fashion book free of ego, hubris, or pretension.

Coleman has struck a note in the collective fashion psyche, in which most probably all of us have uttered the words “what was I thinking?” either proceeding the purchase or wearing of said offensive garment.

The book is a charming, ebullient look at how easy it is for fashion to take a wrong turn and how easily swayed we can all be by a good price or a misguided thought about what we see as  fabulous in the moment.

I Actually Wore This is one of those books that really must be read as the photos are not always as self-explanatory. It’s a book that makes for easy reading as well as a book than can be picked up easily to offer the reader a little private giggle and a memory that you might have filed away. To say the least, this reader was charmed start to finish.