Diane von Furstenberg: A Life Unwrapped

A sweeping biography of one of the most influential and controversial legends of late twentieth-century fashion, an iconic designer whose colorful creations, including the “wrap dress,” captured the modern feminist spirit.
The daughter of a Holocaust survivor and wife of an Austrian nobleman, Diane von Furstenberg burst onto New York’s fashion scene in 1969, and within a few years became an international sensation with her colorful wrap dress in printed jersey. Embraced by millions of American women of all ages, sizes, and shapes, the dress became a cult object and symbol of women’s liberation, tied inexorably to the image of youth, independence, and sex Diane herself projected.
In this masterful biography, Gioia Diliberto brings Diane’s extraordinary life into focus, from her post-World-War-II childhood in Belgium, through her rise to the top of the fashion world during the decadent seventies and glamorous go-go eighties, to her humiliating failures both professional and personal, and her remarkable comeback in the nineties. Like Coco Chanel, Diane has always been her own best advertisement. Morphing from a frizzy brunette outsider in a sea of sleek blondes to a stunning pop cultural icon, she embodied the brand she created—“the DVF woman,” a model of self-sufficiency, sensuality, and confidence.
Diliberto’s captivating, balanced portrait, based on scores of interviews with Diane’s family, friends, lovers, employees, and the designer herself, explores von Furstenberg’s relationships with her husbands and lovers, and illuminates fashion’s evolution from rare luxury to marketing monster and the development of a uniquely American style. Lively and insightful, the book also explores the larger world of the nation’s elite, where fashion, culture, society, politics, and Hollywood collide. Diane von Furstenberg is a modern fable of self-invention, fame, wealth, failure, and success that mirrors late-twentieth century America itself.

Diliberto, Gioia

Humor & Entertainment

Dey Street Books

“A bittersweet modern love story [that] reads as easily as a novel.” —Vogue 
“Fascinating….A detailed, grittier portrait of the woman Hemingway loved and left.” --Newsday
Hemingway's creative influences for novels like The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea came not only from his famous hunting trips, his liaisons in Cuba, or his relationships with Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and other Lost Generation writers. During Hemingway’s period of greatest literary foment, his most seminal relationship was with Hadley Richardson, his first wife. 
In Paris Without End, acclaimed author Gioia Diliberto, biographer of Jane Addams and Brenda Frazier, delivers a gripping, novelistic exploration of Hadley’s personality and her role in Hemingway’s life, finally unclouding our view of Hemingway’s relationship with the one woman he never stopped loving.

PARIS W/O END

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Perennial

Drawing on interviews, diaries, letters, and scrapbooks, this biography traces the rise and fall of the first and most famous of the celebrity debutantes, illustrating the strange customs of three generations of high society

Debutante: The Story of Brenda Frazier

Community & Culture

Alfred.A. Knopf

The first biography in twenty-six years of Jane Addams - founder of the Hull-House settlement and winner of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize - written with access to hundreds of new family documents. "Today, Jane Addams is widely recognized as an extraordinary figure in our nation's history, one of a roster of great Americans - Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. among them - who made lasting contributions to social justice. But as with the lives of many iconographic figures, the legend often obscures the real story". Frequently recognized as one of the most influential women of the century - and considered a heroine by nurses and social workers around the globe - Jane Addams had to struggle long and hard to earn her place in history. Born in 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, she lived during pivotal times when women were only beginning to create new roles for themselves (ironically building on the Victorian ideal of women as ministering angels). Focusing on her metamorphosis from a frail, small-town girl into a woman who inspired hundreds of others to join her movement to serve the poor, A Useful Woman delves into the mysterious ailments and other troubles young Jane faced. Examining for the first time Jane's physical and mental health and the effect of her father's remarriage after her mother's death, biographer Gioia Diliberto directly links Addams's proneness to depression to her inability to conform to the mores of her time. Also, for the first time, she examines in detail Addams's two marriage-like relationships with women. With hundreds of previously unavailable documents at her disposal, Diliberto has written a fascinating study of one of the most intriguing and important women in history, concentrating on her difficult formative years with compelling - and groundbreaking - results.

A Useful Woman : The Early Life of Jane Addams

Scribner

Follows the life of Virginie Gautreau, the subject of John Singer Sargent's famous and controversial portrait, from her Creole heritage and flight to France during the American Civil War, to her troubled adolescence and marriage to a prominent banker.

I Am Madame X

Literature & Fiction

United States

A tale based on the highly competitive world of Coco Chanel follows the experiences of 1920s orphan Isabelle Varlet, who in early adulthood recovers from the death of her fiancé by developing her seamstress talents and struggling through the cutthroat world of high fashion. By the author of I Am Madame X. 50,000 first printing.

The Collection: A Novel

Isabelle Varlet, charming and naive, comes from a long line of seamstresses in a small town in France. A series of unfortunate events and her prodigious sartorial talent carry her to Paris, which in the wake of World War I is electric with new life. When Isabelle takes a job in the atelier of Coco Chanel, the rising star of haute couture, she finds herself in the heart of a glamorous and ruthless world filled with arrogant designers, handsome men, beautiful women, and fashion thieves who prowl Paris hoping to steal designs before they hit the runway. In Chanel's workshop, Isabelle thrives on the time-honored techniques of couture - the pains-taking hand stitches, the perfect fall of fabric - and the sleek, pared-down lines of "Mademoiselle's" revolutionary style. As Isabelle brings an exquisite dress to life for the fall collection - from its embryonic origins in humble muslin to its finished form in the finest silk - she navigates the tempestuous moods of Chanel, the cutthroat antics of her fellow workers, and her own search for love. Just as she did in her critically acclaimed novel I Am Madame X, Gioia Diliberto brings a rich historical moment to life through her vivid and compelling storytelling. Her penetrating research and imagination are gracefully woven together in this poignant story filled with larger-than-life characters embroiled in scandalous tales, passionate love affairs, and extraordinary careers. The Collection is an exuberantly entertaining read.

When John Singer Sargent unveiled Madame X -- his famous portrait of American beauty Virginie Gautreau -- at the 1884 Paris Salon, its subject's bold pose and provocative dress shocked the public and the critics, smashing Sargent's dreams of a Paris career. In this remarkable novel, Gioia Diliberto tells Virginie's story, drawing on the sketchy historical facts to re-create Virginie's tempestuous personality and the captivating milieu of nineteenth-century Paris. Born in New Orleans and raised on a lush plantation, Virginie fled to France during the Civil War, where she was absorbed into the fascinating and wealthy world of grand ballrooms, dressmakers' salons, and artists' ateliers. Even before Sargent painted her portrait, Virginie's reputation for promiscuity and showy self-display made her the subject of vicious Paris gossip. Immersing the reader in Belle Epoque Paris, I Am Madame X is a compulsively readable and richly imagined novel illuminating the struggle between Virginie and Sargent over the outcome of a painting that changed their lives and affected the course of art history.

I Am Madame X: A Novel

A biography of Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first wife. It describes their life as part of the expatriate community of Paris in the 1920s, which included F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and James and Nora Joyce.

Hadley a Life of Hadley Richardson Hemin

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

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Books by Diliberto, Gioia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Diliberto, Gioia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Diane von Furstenberg: A Life Unwrapped

Diane von Furstenberg: A Life Unwrapped

PARIS W/O END

Debutante: The Story of Brenda Frazier

A Useful Woman : The Early Life of Jane Addams

I Am Madame X

The Collection: A Novel

The Collection: A Novel

I Am Madame X: A Novel

Hadley a Life of Hadley Richardson Hemin