Betsey: A Memoir

Merriam Webster dictionary defines memoir as: a narrative composed from personal experience or a history of one’s life. This definition might be applied to Betsey: A Memoir except for the fact that once the reader begins reading, he or she might realize they sense they are reading someone’s journal or diary.

Betsey: A Memoir is an extremely personal story of one woman’s life from a country girl who dreamed of being in fashion to becoming a mega designer who privately owned over 60 shops that bore her name. It is a story told in the first person that makes the reading a much more intimate experience. As one delves deeper into the book you realize that this book is not solely devoted to Betsey Johnson the brand but about Betsey Johnson, the woman.

The book is a warts and all story of this designer’s personal and professional life. This dedicated fashionphile and fashion reader found out so much more than ever imagined about the trajectory of this designer who was unquestionably a one of a kind dynamo in the industry.

On another level Betsey might serve as a manual about how a fashion business was born in the heydays of the ’60s and grew to this juggernaut during an almost 50-year period. She relives and retells her life in relation to the fashion world and in its telling reflects just how much the business of fashion has changed on every level. The memoir should be read by fledgling designers as well as the most seasoned of fashion readers as Ms. Johnson generously shares the highs, lows, and certainly the pitfalls of being swept up into the fashion universe at a time when it was soaring to unimaginable heights.

Betsey: A Memoir is a very engaging read that will entertain and educate the reader depending on their frame of reference. Do not think that this is a book that is strictly for the fashion reader as the story has a very human side that can be appreciated by those who may never have dipped their toe into the waters of this genre.