I ended up not hating it as much as I thought I would, although he remains largely stream of consciousness (almost) and he still uses the word effeminate way too often. He name drops a lot of the time, and his stories start somewhere almost interesting, then by the end of the chapter you realize you took four subject jumps back into him name dropping famous people he’s met.

I can see how the book would be attractive to someone, maybe they are more familiar with the fashion industry, they have lived in New York or they currently do and can go along with the descriptions of the city. But it just didn’t hold much for me. Some of it I related to, being gay in a religious family and coming to terms with the fact that he couldn’t tell his father (mine too died before he “knew” knew of me, if you can make sense of that) and his descriptions of his feelings appeal to me, but he’s just so overtly pompous? Is that the right word for it? I’m not sure, that feels too harsh, but nevertheless somewhere along those lines. He also says things...especially in the beginning, that you just know are fake, or exaggerated. A 6 year old standing up to a clerk telling him his mom “isn’t his honey”? Nope I don’t buy it. He paints himself as this savior of women’s rights, and really he just is overly infatuated with his mother? That sounds harsher than I mean it to, once again, but I just don’t know how to explain it...I’d say read to get the feel but honestly it isn’t worth the read. It’s almost 400 pages of him humble bragging about his career sprinkled in with insights on what it was like to be an closeted/then openly gay man in the 80s.

The book was interesting, the world has changed so much since his book, although you’re never really sure of the timeline he jumps around so much. I would give it 2.5 stars but ya can’t do that here. I wouldn’t recommend the book to anyone unless they were very into fashion, or even had a slight idea of who this man is.