My opinion about the first book by Garance Doré
If you love Fashion you must know Garance Doré. She is one of the very first fashion bloggers to have become world famous. She is French but lives in New York. She is a great illustrator. She is a very good photographer. She was the partner and muse of Scott Shuman aka The Sartorialist. She is engaged to Chris Norton, trumpetist and singer. And, last but not least, she is my Muse for 2016.
Yes, for 2016 I have chosen to look at Garance every time I need some inspiration and every time I do not dare daring in my business or in my private life – this is something very useful you can do too: choose a guiding muse to help you gain a better focus and understanding on your life and business’ turning points or difficult moments (thank you Gioia for this suggestion!).
This choice was born after I read Garance’s book.
Love x Style x Life is a very interesting and entertaining read, but it is also a beautiful object you just can’t stop looking at because of Garance’s wonderful photos and illustrations, its very stylish design and use of fonts and colors.
What I have loved the most about this book is its section about Garance’s career. There, Garance details the 10 steps that have led her to become a renown blogger illustrator. She tells about the way she has become aware of being a good illustrator, how she has dared accepting her first job – about which she new very little but in which she finally succeeded, how she pretended to live in Paris when she started to sell her illustrations because it was more glamourous and because everyone assumed she was parisian anyway, and much more.
Every story Garance shares with her reader is full of inspiring hints, but Garance does not take herself too seriously and this is something that is reflected by her writing style, which is light, amusing and full of sense of humour so that you always have the feeling you are reading your best friend when you read her, both in English and in French.
By the way… I have bought the book in French because I was convinced she had written it in her mother tongue and that only then she had had it translated in English. I was wrong. The book was written in English and then translated in French and adapted by Alexandra Maillard and Garance in order to fully reflect her French writing style, which I like so much because it is full of figures of speech and words belonging to everyday French.
Going back to Love x Style x Life, another thing that I really like is the fact that it offers multiple reading choices. You can read it from the first page to the last or jump from one section to the other simply following your inspiration or you can just revel in looking at Garance’s illustrations and photos of Fashion items, wonderful smart women and stylish outfits.
There are also some beautiful pictures of Garance herself. She is a smiling woman and I really like smiling people.
Smiling people spread good vibrations all round them and Garance’s book is full of good vibes indeed. I keep it on my desk and from time to time I go back to the chapters I loved the most, I look at Garance and the other women pictured and interviewed in the book as an empowering example of free and fulfilled women, I read the most entertaining chapters to relax a bit between one translating session and the other.
If you are in Berlin tomorrow or in Paris on Monday, you can meet Garance and have your copy signed here.
Love x Style x Life is not available in Italian yet, but you if you can not wait for the Italian version to be published, you can read it in English, French, German or Polish.
I hope you will enjoy this book as much as I did! Feel free to share you comments here or on my Facebook page.
Love,
Floriana.