Nowadays, when one thinks of someone who’s “famous for being famous,” one thinks of the Kardashians or Instagram influencers. But the phenomenon of the It girl is a long and storied one.
I read this at about the same time as I read Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century, and they work pretty well as companions – that book describing trendsetting fashion, and this book describing the trendsetters themselves.
Young tells the story of It girls through the centuries, who hold such diverse roles in life as sex workers, models, actresses, and debutantes, but have in common the way they exemplify the fashion and ethos of the age, and their wide dissemination through popular media. I enjoyed that while she covered a wide range of women, she clearly connected them as It girls, even if that was not the term applied to them, and convincingly made the case of why specific kinds of women took off during certain eras.
However, while I found Young’s discussions of these various It girls interesting, I did wish that she went a bit more in-depth about why the zeitgeist shifted, bringing some It girls into fashion and casting others out of it. I was also curious about the outside groups, media and the like, that promoted the It girls in their time – who they chose, why they did it, and what they got out of it. I thought there was a lot more to dig into the stories of these women.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.