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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN October 3, 2004 Issue 
The Fashionista Files: Adventures in Four-Inch Heels and Faux Pas By Melissa de la Cruz and Karen Robinovitz Ballantine Books, 2004 
A Tree Died for This? With its catchy cover and clever title "The Fashionista Files: Adventures in Four-Inch Heels and Faux Pas" by Melissa de La Cruz and Karen Robinovitz promised to be an antidote to the gloom left by the angst-ridden "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter." But by page eleven I had realized that the title and the back cover publicity comments had misrepresented it and that this was decidedly the stupidest book I had ever picked up to read. Initially I thought that I should not waste time on it, but then decided to read it in its entirety and give it the bad review it deserves. And bad it is. Judging from the writing, authors Melissa de la Cruz and Karen Robinovitz appear to be two shallow and empty-headed young women who mistake their obsession with clothes for knowledge of fashion and who have the audacity to call themselves "fashionista." Their lengthy explanation of what fashionista means, may be the high point of the book. It is all downhill from there on. The book lacks content and the same thing is repeated over and over in a thousand and one different ways. But unlike Scheherazade's tales of enchantment of "A Thousand and One Nights," these tales make up for a great deal of repetitive boredom. "This tome will give you a fierce foray into the way of the fashionista, write the two authors. "It's part memoir, full of our tales of fashion flops and feats, crashes and coups; and part self-help, packed with the kinds of tips that will help you to lead a life more fabulous." Pity the fools that take those authors' advice. Pity the authors. So misguided is their belief in their own fashionista accomplishments, that they have put numerous photos of themselves throughout the book to illustrate their great fashionista quality. But alas, all we see are two rather ridiculous women - one too short and the other too chubby for the clothes they assume make them look oh, so fashionable. They credit their "achievements" to their mothers. Apparently their mothers taught them nothing else but fashion. "When I was a child," writes Karen, "my mother carted me around when she went shopping, introducing me to designer names like Ungaro and Valentino." "From my mom I learned to buy shoes I liked in every color (when you find a shape that fits you, invest!)," writes Melissa. Foolish me, I thought that mothers were supposed to impart, through personal example, life-lessons on their offspring. Teach them manners, etiquette, the difference between right and wrong, how to grow up and become contributing members to society. "To this day," the authors tell us, "we can accurately recount what we wore every first day of school. We catalog our memories and nights out by the ensembles we donned...We can't recall a single time we've hung out together without asking each other what we're wearing, where we bought it, and how soon we can borrow it." Judging from the book's limited vocabulary and the poor syntax and grammar, it is doubtful that the two authors remember much more than the clothes they wore on their first day of school. Insipid stories. Vacuous lives. Could this possibly be the result of the fact that reading, especially amongst the group of 18 to 24 year-olds, has declined drastically? These and other findings of the recent National Endowment for the Arts report "Reading At Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America" are very disturbing. Even more disturbing is what the two authors have to say about reading and books. "Do fashionistas read? You may wonder," they ask. "Well they like to flip through pages, certainly. Books make nice decorative objects, and fashionistas like to collect oversize, glossy coffee-table books about art and design, and off-the-beaten-path, hard-to-find, esoteric magazines." Here are some suggestions from the authors' "guide to giving your library an air of sophistication:" photography books by fashion photographers Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon, biographies of Diana Vreeland and Andy Warhol and silly things like "The Harvard Guide to Shopping" and their own earlier book, "How To Become Famous in Two Weeks or Less." Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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