COVID-19 is keeping many a social butterfly in their cocoons nowadays. Here’s something you’re sure to enjoy indoors and out this spring – the old-fashioned pursuit of a good book.
“Book it” will be an occasional WAG Weekly feature in the days of the coronavirus. We’re sure you’ve already stockpiled some tomes, along with your dry and paper goods. So we begin with two fashionably quotable quote books from our friends at Thames & Hudson, due out June 9. “The World According to Coco: The Wit and Wisdom of Coco Chanel” ($16.95, 176 pages) – edited by Patrick Mauriès and Jean-Christophe Napias, with illustrations and design by Isabelle Chemin – offers the elegant designer’s acerbic takes on everything, from elegance itself (“A touch of beauty or elegance has the same fantastical power as a candle flame in a dark room” to time (“Age does not matter: you can be ravishing at twenty, charming at forty and irresistible for the rest of your life.”)
She predicted that when she was gone, elegance would go with her. Enter Karl Lagerfeld, the creative fire that burned at Chanel for 36 years. In “The World According to Karl: The Wit and Wisdom of Karl Lagerfeld” ($16.95, 176 pages) – also edited by edited by Mauriès and Napias, with illustrations by Charles Ameline – Lagerfeld gives Chanel an opinionated run for her money. Here he is on goddesses: “I love goddesses because they were the first liberated women, who were free to do anything. Divinities and muses are feminists.” And on books: “Reading is the biggest luxury in my life, the thing that makes me happiest.”
Amen to that, Karl, amen to that.
– Georgette Gouveia
