Birds of a Feather Shop Together: Aesop’s Fables for the Fashionable Set

“This petite anthology will have the most seasoned of fashionable folks blushing—especially when one of the fables’ morals hits home in the most uncomfortable and revelatory ways.”

The dictionary defines a fable as “a legendary story of supernatural happenings.”

Here, in Birds of a Feather Shop Together: Aesop’s Fables for the Fashionable Set, Ms. Bark offers up an unusual take on these childhood tales, re-imagining them as pertaining to, of all things, fashion. The end result is a purely delightful, sometimes hilarious, collection of Aesop’s fables for the modern day fashion and style maven.

This petite anthology will have the most seasoned of fashionable folks blushing—especially when one of the fables’ morals hits home in the most uncomfortable and revelatory ways.

Take for example, the tale of a high flying “Trophy Wife” who runs into her hardworking friend one day. Ms. Trophy is dining, and Ms. Worker is on her way to the office. The quick synopsis is as follows: Trophy says, “Do stay for lunch; I haven’t seen you in ages!” while she twirls her crater-sized diamond around her slender finger; Worker replies “ Would love to, but bills to pay and kids to feed and mortgages to pay.”

The scenario is familiar to many of us—especially these days—but now fast-forward decades later: Trophy is on her way to the Salvation Army to check out new arrivals while Worker is spied having a fashionable ladies’ lunch. The title of the episode is “Ladies Who Lunch,” and the moral is: “It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.” The “fable” is loosely based on the Aesop’s fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper.”

Ms. Bark employs the use of Bill Donovan’s gouaches to great effect, complementing the nuanced telling of each of the fables. All in all, Birds of a Feather Shop Together: Aesop’s Fables for the Fashionable Set is a book that will serve as a reminder that certain life lessons are better read about than learned the hard way. It also offers up a rather embarrassing reflection of our own vanities and foibles.

Birds of a Feather Shop Together: Aesop’s Fables for the Fashionable Set certainly will prove a great conversation piece among those who share many guilty little secrets—moral and perhaps not so much—revolving around the pleasures found in style and fashion.