Debut biographer Dickinson digs up buried treasure in this essential and inspiring account.
The early-20th-century woman designer who revolutionized fashion—then disappeared.
“She really invented sportswear, which is this country’s major contribution to fashion,” said Calvin Klein of McCardell in 1981. Now, thanks to Dickinson’s excellent, delightfully readable biography, this extraordinary woman may finally be more widely given credit for that. In a prologue set in 1955, just three years before McCardell’s untimely death at 52, we see the designer giving Betty Friedan, then “an eager young journalist,” a tour of her innovations. “She’d developed leotards and leggings, brought hoodies, denim, and leather into womenswear, ushered the swimsuit into its contemporary form, included pockets in her clothes, and made the wrap dress a wardrobe staple.” Though “we owe much of what hangs in our closets to Claire McCardell,” writes Dickinson, it’s her contemporary (and rival) Christian Dior’s name we remember. Interestingly, Dior also died at 52 around the same time, but he had had the foresight to appoint a successor to manage his brand, a young fellow named Yves Saint Laurent. McCardell’s failure to do so meant that her label closed down shortly after her death. “Stitching Claire McCardell’s name back onto the apparel she pioneered is not merely a history lesson in provenance; it is a vital and timely reminder of a designer, and a movement, that was always about far more than clothes.” McCardell’s achievement was founded on unconventional choices. She chose not to have children and did not marry until she was nearly 40. She was ferociously private, rarely discussing her personal life in interviews, which makes Dickinson’s deeply researched portrait all the more impressive, illuminating a whole network of women who supported each other in rigidly sexist times. One great example: During World War II, the chemical used to bleach cotton became unavailable; McCardell learned this from textile mill owner Hope Skillman, who apologized for the “dingy off-white” material she was producing as a result. “McCardell didn’t think it was so bad; she saw it as a creamy, mellow color and began using it, helping establish a trend for the color now known as ‘bone.’”
Debut biographer Dickinson digs up buried treasure in this essential and inspiring account.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781668045237
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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