The Hundred Dresses: The Most Iconic Styles of Our Time

“. . . if insight or education is what you are after, then you might want to reconsider . . .”

Ms. McKean has added her two cents to the topic of the most iconic dress styles of our time by using the one word that will differentiate her book from the current crop of titles with very similar titles. She has chosen to incorporate the word style as part of the subtitle to her The Hundred Dresses.

The rub is that these so called “styles” are confined to her imagination and not part of the vocabulary of many others involved in the business of fashion. Apparently, her work as editor for the New Oxford American Dictionary 2nd Edition has colored her vision on the topic by allowing her to think she can create her own vocabulary about dresses.

There are some equally disturbing moments in the book when it it comes to the provenance of a style where she exercises her power as author to make sweeping pronouncements which any devotee of fashion can prove to be less than true. There is a very narrow vision and knowledge of fashion at work here.

One of the major issues when penning a book of this nature is that there is that so much history is already written on the subject that any author must be almost OCD about what they put forth in print. After all, the written word whether digital or printed lives on far longer than the spoken word, thus allowing for endless disputation by those who might disagree with contentions put forth.

For instance, the bubble dress was not the invention of Christian Lacroix; its origins date back to the 50s with a designer you might have heard of: Balenciaga.

Then there is the baby doll dress illustrated as an Empire style dress, which inherently has no waist. The text then proceeds to discuss its waist—but there is no waist! Saying that the purpose of the dress is to make its wearer look infantilized is a bit of a stretch—even for an imaginative fashion expert.

There are many, many more instances the reader can take issue with.

Unfortunately, Ms. McKean’s expertise as a blogger may have negatively affected her ability to speak in actual truths. She seems to aspire to present a piece of witty fashion journalism that might have been previously construed as too analytical in its accounting without the addition of the so-called wit. It is possible that she aims her books at an audience that is not overly exposed to the subject of fashion.

The takeaway here is simply if you look at The Hundred Dresses: The Most Iconic Styles of Our Time as a piece of witty fluff that might as well be fiction then the book is just fine. But if insight or education is what you are after, then you might want to reconsider adding this book to your list of must-have fashion reads for summer.