The music pounds, the champagne flows. There is brimstone in the air along with poison and obsession and vendetta.it is the smell of a factory that feeds on young girls.

Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women:
by Michael Gross

Positives: I liked the Author's writing. The dark side of t he fashion industry was absolutely captured. I feel the writer is quite talented.

The negatives? What I thought I'd like best was what I wound up liking least. I had been looking forward to reading about some of the models. But aspects were way to gossipy and focused so greatly on their love lives.

I guess I should have expected it..the book is about Fashion..and Models after all! But I really wanted to know more about the women themselves, the different personality aspects that made them who they are. I came at it from a more psychological perspective .

This book wasn't BAD or anything but it wasn't as powerful as I'd have liked and honestly? After awhile , the models started to blur into each other and I got bored. I had not imagined myself being bored with a book on an industry like this but there you go. It happened. ( )

Great book with interesting stories. Back when models were known by their first names and were on magazine covers.

I really liked this book, which focuses on the history of modeling, from the 1920s or so up until the mid-1990s. The title and the back copy both make it seem like it's merely a collection of gossip and dirt, and while there's dirt a plenty, it's actually pretty serious. There are a LOT of names to keep track of, and I do think that in order to enjoy this book you need to have not only an appreciation for fashion but also some prior knowledge of prominent fashion photographers and models of the 20th century. My Pinterest is like 90% vintage fashion and fashion photography so I'm probably an ideal audience.

The first two-thirds of the book, which focus on the history of models and the industry up until the 1970s or so, were fascinating. The last third was a different story, because a lot of the focus left the models & photographers and instead focused on the agencies as the so-called "Modeling Wars" of the 1980s started. I have NO head for business, so the internecine conflicts within and between different agencies left me cold.

The tragic lives of many models, and the abuses perpetrated on naive young girls, are heartbreaking. It's a difficult book because it leaves you thinking, by enjoying these pictures and buying fashion magazines, am I perpetuating an abusive cycle? With art, there is always a question of, if the artist is a bad person, does that make the art bad? The addition of vulnerable human beings as the center of that art makes the question even more difficult in regards to fashion & fashion photography.

Anyway, if you have an interest in fashion and/or fashion photography, you'll probably enjoy this book. I give it four stars. ( )

Riveting.... ( )