Walking with the Muses: A Memoir

Pat Cleveland is a living legend of fashion who was the rarest of exotic birds to have inhabited fashion. She has withstood the test of time in a business that has a memory as long as one’s pinky. She remains inimitable and has written herself into the annals of fashion and its history in its glory days and beyond with the publication of her new book Walking with the Muses as well as with her body of work.

Any seasoned fashionphile knows that Pat Cleveland was a supermodel way before the term was even conceived of because she stood out from the pack even when the modus operandi of the times was to be unique. Anyone lucky enough to have seen her on a runway can testify to her ability to eat up the runway and pull you into the moment. In other words, there never was before her and never will be another like her.

All of that affords Cleveland the material and the gravitas to expose her journey to the destinations of her career and her life. You want to know if she tells all? She tells you just enough to hold your interest without turning this is into a bang and tell, which is much to her credit, given her illustrious behavior and her many liaisons over the years. What the astute or educated reader will be given is the opportunity to see fashion from the inside as it was truly peaking during the 70s and 80s. She is insightful, knowledgeable first hand, and surprisingly adept at telling at her story, warts and all.

Without question, Walking with the Muses is a worthwhile read for the fashion obsessed or simply for those who have a genuine curiosity about the fashion system. Sadly Cleveland will remind many that once upon a time when real fashion professionals ruled the business, being different was a badge of honor and an asset and most definitely not a deficit.

She is living proof that one’s grit and determination is made up of talent and the ability to overcome all the obstacles that were thrown in her path. This is a book that is highly recommended on multiple levels for many readers of many ages. You might even remove the fashion quotient and see it as possibly a 20th century Cinderella tale or just a journey of a young woman in search of her dreams who let nothing stand in her way of achieving her ultimate goals.