Book Review: "The Beautiful Fall" Is a Beautiful Read

I’m not quite sure why I spend $3.99 every time Vogue hits the newsstand. The first 100 pages are cleverly disguised advertisements, editors frequently try to pass off pictures of themselves with Manhattan socialites at last month’s soiree as relevant feature articles, and unexplained mention of Proenza Schouler, Bottega Veneta, and Lacroix make me feel like I’m studying a foreign language. And then there’s the undocumented friendships and fallouts between fashion designers and the unsaid power structure and precedence that you know must exist among design houses, but is buried deep in subtext, never explained, and unabashedly littered throughout it’s pages.

It’s not Vogue. It’s vague.

Enter Alicia Drake’s The Beautiful Fall; Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent, and Glorious Excess in 1970’s Paris. Finally, a way to make sense of it all, or at least, to explain why none of it actually makes sense.

At 429 pages, including an extensive notes section and list of over one hundred interviewed sources (some interviewed multiple times), Drake provides adequate histories of the Fashion Houses of Dior and Chanel, and extraordinary and extensive commentary on the comings and goings of two of their visionaries, and future competitors, Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. She brilliantly chronicles the escapades of both designers and their entourages with explicit details provided by first-hand accounts as told to Drake by the very people who held court with Lagerfeld and Saint Laurent during the tumultuous decade.

Us Weekly readers beware, Fall is a tedious read, much like remembering the social blunders, lover’s quarrels and friendship squabbles of your college years.

…and what everyone was wearing at the time.

But if your taste in reading lies somewhere between nonsensical fashion magazines and weighty historical biographies, then Fall is definitely for you. The book eclipses the “Chick Lit” genre completely. Sure, there’s fashion, romance and Parisian glamour, all three staple ingredients of a quick beach read, but Fall focuses on a darker side of Paris, one where social cliques and the drug of choice rule the club scene and the couturier salons on the Avenue Montaigne. It’s a Paris where muses come and go, lovers often stay and a designer’s inherent eccentricities are both tolerated and idolized.

Unfortunately, what the book lacks are visual reminders that beyond their eccentricities, Lagerfeld and Saint Laurent were respected for their artistic contributions to the fashion industry. The book contains ample photographs of both designers dining, partying, vacationing, and celebrating with friends and not enough of them actually working, or for that matter, examples of their work. In short: where are the clothes?! When Drake details Saint Laurent’s envelope-pushing Haute Couture show of ‘71, her descriptions of the runway ensembles just don’t do it. And it isn’t enough to simply chart the length of hemlines for two decades worth of prêt-a-porter (ready-to-wear) collections. Drake should have taken a page out of Vogue’s book and laced her work with runway snapshots.

Yes, it would have been beautiful were Fall made into a theatrical coffee table book, but as it stands, it is a stunning accomplishment, a remarkable five and one half year pursuit on Drake’s part and, without question, her life’s work.

Absent from her surreal list of interviewed sources, and Drake is quick to point it out, are Lagerfeld and Saint Laurent, not by choice (Drake tried tirelessly to track them down), but rather than detracting from her work, the omission preserves the enigmatic nature of her two protagonists.

And while Saint Laurent, who Drake blatantly favors, has retired from the industry and is hardly a public figure these days, Lagerfeld seems to be hitting his stride, designing a line for H&M and making frequent appearances on the Hollywood party circuit, and creating waves at this month’s Paris Fashion Week with a comment on the claim that the designers only employ thin models and therefore promote eating disorders.

“We don’t see anorexic girls,” Lagerfeld says of the models in Chanel’s shows. “The girls are skinny. They have skinny bones.”

Lagerfeld, who has dropped a significant amount of weight in recent years, now moonlights as a fashion photographer and recently snapped Lindsay Lohan for Elle Magazine. He’s also been pictured with La Lohan at several dinners, one of which she was described as his “date” for the evening. Is Lindsay his newest muse a la Donna Jordan in the Saint-Tropez years? Or is he just reestablishing his A-list status with the new generation?

One thing is certain, Lagerfeld’s story is far from complete, in fact the fall of 2006 may turn out to be his most notable season. That is, if the fall Drake is referring to is actually a season and not a downfall, a falling out, or a fall from grace.

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