Birds of Paradise: An Intimate View of the New York Fashion World
by Rose Hartman
Delta Books, 212 pages, 1980
Written on the cusp of the transition from the 1970s to the 1980s, Birds of Paradise sets out to do two things: explain to readers the way the fashion industry functions in New York and provide them a glimpse behind the scenes. Author and photographer Rose Hartman succeeds in both, though perhaps the latter is the true reason most of us would pick up this vintage classic.
It’s all well and good to explain the role and responsibilities of particular fashion players, but most of us have a pretty good idea what a store buyer does, or a fashion reporter, a designer or a window dresser. It’s the gossipy tidbits and the exhaustive details Hartman employs to describe a specific event that pushes all the right voyeuristic buttons. If you’ve ever longed to have lived the glamorous life of late-’70s/early-’80s New York with late nights at Studio 54, hanging out with Andy Warhol and hob-nobbing with rich society ladies at Halston fashion shows, this book is for you.
Illustrated throughout with Hartman’s own primarily black-and-white photographs and divided into nine sections each headed by a key profession or occasion, the book ebbs and flows, with the most energetic and interesting chapters being those you’d expect. Kicking off with a long-winded (though highly-entertaining) description of a private Halston runway presentation, Hartman sets the tone for the rest of the book. Expect lots of celebrity name-dropping and breathless accounts of the fabulous life.
Hartman delivers precisely what most of us are looking for in a book like this — dish on designers, models, photographers and press types of the time. What Hartman uncovers is hardly new news (the book was published 34 years ago, after all), but the scene she sets will have early-’80s fashion aficionados pining for those heady, sweaty disco days, living happily and vicariously through her experiences.
