First published 2009
Jen Lancaster excavates her past to understand how she became the woman who would later carry designer bags to the unemployment office. She revisits her younger selves through the lens of fashion choices and cultural touchstones. As a Junior Girl Scout, she wielded badges like weapons and mastered the art of extortion. Later, as a college student desperate to join the right sorority, she fumbled through a world where knowing Coach from Louis Vuitton mattered more than she realized. Her early corporate days brought fresh humiliations, including a bewildering first encounter with office technology that left her questioning everything. Lancaster connects each phase of her life to the clothes she wore and the icons she worshipped, revealing how a young woman's misguided confidence can shape her future. This memoir shows the building blocks of the personality that would later navigate unemployment lines, city living disasters, and weight loss adventures with trainers and sleeping pills. Lancaster discovers that her trademark hubris didn't appear overnight but grew from years of small victories, crushing defeats, and the eternal hope that the right outfit could solve any problem.
Genres: autobiography, memoir, 21st-century, fashion
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, personal-growth
Period: 21st-Century
365 pages · Hardcover · NAL