Nostalgia in Vogue

“In short, Nostalgia in Vogue is a book to be read and not just skimmed through for its pretty photographs—for if you just skim it, you will miss wonderful pieces of history sliced from Vogue and the 20th century.”

With the spate of glossy pictorial tomes that make their appearance during the last quarter of every year, Ms. MacSweeney sets herself apart by having not just authored another picture book for the coffeetable.

Nostalgia in Vogue is an incredibly personal accounting by various “artists” and how a photograph affected them; naturally the photographs had to have appeared in Vogue at some time in the past.

In light of that fact that these artists are not just from the world of fashion, the book opens up to a much larger audience. There are nostalgic looks back from the likes of Joan Didion, Edmund White, Adam Green(son of Adolf Green), Karl Lagerfeld, Manolo Blahnik, George Plimpton, Sister Parish, and many more authors and artists who entertain us with observations and insights about Barbra Streisand, Leonard Bernstein, Richard Avedon, Pauline Trigere, and Mick Jagger, to name a few.

One would have to say that the maximum interest in this book would be from those of us who can be defined as “baby boomers,” but certainly anyone who has an appreciation of pop culture will love reading about so many of these personalities since their personal recollections are bolstered by the observations of other well-known figures.

This is an eclectic collection that reads like pages torn from a dusty diary miraculously found in some famous fashionista’s attic. The end result is that the reader feels sentimental and to a certain degree, confided in. The stories become much more than just retold stories, sweeping up the reader into a much more intimate relationship with each storyteller and the subject of his or her attention.

In short, Nostalgia in Vogue is a book to be read and not just skimmed through for its pretty photographs—for if you just skim it, you will miss wonderful pieces of history sliced from Vogue and the 20th century.