Shocked My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me

by VOLK, PATRICIA

• ISBN13: 9780345803429
• ISBN10: 0345803426
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-04-22
• Publisher: Vintage

Summary

An NPR Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

How does a girl fashion herself into a woman? In this richly illustrated memoir, writer Patricia Volk juxtaposes her two childhood idols to find her answer. Her mother, Audrey, was an upper-middle-class New Yorker and a great beauty—meticulously groomed, proudly conventional. Elsa Schiaparelli was an avant-garde fashion designer whose creations broke every rule and elevated clothing into art. While growing up in Audrey's strict household, Patricia read Schiap's freewheeling autobiography and was transformed by it.
            Shocked weaves Audrey's traditional notions of domesticity with Schiap's often outrageous ideas, giving us a revelatory meditation on beauty and on being a daughter, sister, and mother—and demonstrating, meanwhile, how a single book can change a life.

Author Biography

Patricia Volk is the author of the memoir Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family, as well as four works of fiction. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Bennington College. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York, The New Yorker, and Playboy. She lives in New York City.