Neither Albert Camus nor George Orwell are authors usually associated with fashion, but both manage to be included in this entertaining anthology, whose editor has wisely decided not to limit her options by sticking only to the more obvious sources. Camus features thanks to a description of fashionably-attired young men in The Outsider, while Orwell merits several entries, not least for an amusing report from Down and Out in Paris and London of selling his clothes to raise much-needed funds. As these two extracts demonstrate, Judith Watt is anything but narrow-minded in her definition of what constitutes fashion writing, but there are still plenty of authors whose association with the field is immediately apparent: the couturier Paul Poiret on his fondness for vivid colour; Christian Dioron - who else - Christian Dior; and Brett Easton Ellis on New York fashion shows. To end with, a quote from the late Diana Vreeland, a formidable editor of Vogue, who observed in her memoirs: "Black is the hardest colour in the world to get right - except for grey".
- Robert O'Byrne