We Are Reading
50 is the New Fifty, apparently
Suzanne Braun Levine has just released a new book in the States called 50 is the new Fifty, which encourages the thought that life is just terrific for women in their fifties and sixties so long as they don’t waste… Read More
Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown
Magazine editors are like fashion directors, fascinating, but often more than a little bit scary (see our previous post on Anna Wintour). We have encountered many high powered women in our careers that make Miranda Priestley in ‘The Devil Wears… Read More
How To Dress for Success by Edith Head
One of the Women’s Room’s favourite animated films is The Incredibles, due entirely to the wonderful Edna Mode, the height-challanged, giant glasses wearing fashion maven who gives the ailing Super Heros’ suits a stylish makeover. She has the best lines… Read More
Anthropology books
It’s an interesting time to be watching our society. If we hadn’t chosen fashion as a career (or become chocolatiers), The Woman’s Room would have quite liked to have been anthropologists. After A level Sociology we were all ready to… Read More
A pile of books
There is something special about a pile of new books, the anticipation and excitement of knowing you will be lost in another time or place every time you pick it up and the simple pleasure of a stolen hour on your own,… Read More
Creative Space: Urban Homes of Artists and Innovators by Francesca Gavin
As you know we are very nosey here at the Womens Room and love nothing more than a good old snoop round interesting peoples houses. Remember the fabulous blog The Selby we told you about a while ago featuring the… Read More
The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant
We’ve been reading The Thoughtful Dresser for a while now and have been a bit slow in shouting about it, even though it’s been on our reading list for a couple of weeks. If you haven’t read it and you… Read More
Fashionista: A Century of Style Icons by Simon Werle
Fashionista is a inspiring portrayal of fashion icons with unique and individual style who have inspired and helped promote fashion designers over the years. Icons include classics such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Audrey Hepburn, it-girls like Edie Sedgewick and… Read More
The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
When we came up with the idea of the Women’s Room, there was never any dispute about what we were aiming to do, who our readers were or what we were going to write about. We mulled the idea over… Read More
Life’s Too F..ing Short by Janet Street Porter
Ms Street Porter is a marmite sandwich, you either love her or hate her and we quite often swing between the two emotions, but we do admire her strong point of view and she is definitely redefining what it is… Read More
Just Me by Sheila Hancock
Being stylish isn’t always about looking fabulous, sometimes it’s about being fabulous too. Sheila Hancock is certainly well turned out at 75 with great poise, but it is her wonderfully no-bullshit, I’m-far-from-perfect-but-I’m-trying attitude that makes her such a wise bird.… Read More
The Disciples by James Mollison
We are indebted to Word, middleagedad’s favourite middleagemagazine, for bringing The Disciples, a glorious new book by photographer James Mollison to our attention. Never before has a book brought together the fashion passion of middleagemum with the music obsessions of… Read More
How to Meet a Man After Forty and Other Midlife Dilemmas Solved by Shane Watson
This could do with having a plain brown wrapper as the slightly misleading title on Shane Watson’s new book needed explaining when it arrived in our house, “It’s for research, honestly”. Middleagedad.com looked alarmed.
In fact it’s not the observations… Read More
Milk by Anne Medelson
I could start a library with my cookery book collection and a quick look on the Amazon bestsellers list shows that 6 of the top 20 best selling books over Christmas were cookery books, so I’m not the only one… Read More
I Feel Bad ABout My Neck by Nora Ephron
Sharply funny and wickedly observant Nora Ephron is a writer that we love at The Women’s Room. She wrote the script for Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry met Sally as well as the novel behind the film Heartburn.
But… Read More
The Kitchen Revolution
Being busy working women with families to feed, we are always looking for short cuts to brilliant meals here at The Women’s Room and consequently got very excited when one of our readers from deepest darkest Wales (thanks Lindsey)… Read More
Garden People by Ursula Buchan
This fabulous book of photographs provides a nostalgic look at the gardening scene of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. Famous gardeners and less well known dedicated nursery men, plant enthusiasts, designers and artists are pictured in their gardens: wearing the… Read More
We love: Persephone Books
This summer we discovered an amazing publishing house cum book shop in Londons Lambs Conduit Street. Persephone Books prints “mainly neglected fiction and non-fiction by women, for women and about women”.
Nicola Beauman, who founded and still runs the company,… Read More
My Dear Bomb by Yohji Yamamoto
So, neither Jane or I have quite finished reading this yet (ok, we’ve hardly started) but we couldn’t resist the book when we went to the recent exhibition at the V&A. It is a totally ‘fashion’ book to look at;… Read More