Ellen Stern

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Gracie Mansion: A Celebration Of New York City's Mayoral Residence

Ellen Stern

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Threads: My Life Behind The Seams In The High-Stakes World Of Fashion

Ellen Stern; Joseph Abboud

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Threads: My Life Behind the Seams in the High-Stakes World of Fashion

Ellen Stern; Joseph Abboud

Designers are great white sharks, and we roam the waters ourselves. We often pretend to like and admire each other, but sometimes we don't even bother to fake it. The fashion industry is as hardworking, incestuous, and political as any other, and it's virtually impossible, given the size of designers' egos, to sincerely wish someone else well, because behind every false tribute is 'It should have been me.'”

So writes Joseph Abboud, who fell in love with style at five. There in the dark of the movie house, he wasn't just some Lebanese kid with a babysitter. He was the hero, in tweeds and pocket squares. That's where he learned that clothes represented a better life -- a life he wanted, and would grab, for himself. From his blue-collar childhood in Boston's South End to his spread-collar success as one of America's top designers, he has forged a remarkable path through the unglamorous business of makingpeople look glamorous.

He transformed American menswear by replacing the traditional stiff-shouldered silhouette with a grown-up European sensuality. He was the first designer to win the coveted CFDA award as Best Menswear Designer two years in a row and the first designer to throw out the opening pitch at Fenway Park. He's been jilted by Naomi Campbell (who didn't show up on the runway for his first women's fashion show) and questioned by the FBI (who did show up in his office right after September 11 because he fit the profile). He's soared and sunk more than a few times -- and lived to tell the tales.

Threads is his off-the-record take on fashion, from the inside out. With breezy irreverence, he looks at guys and taste, divas and deviousness, fabric and texture, and all those ties. He takes us to the luxe bastion of Louis Boston, where he came of age and learned the trade, and to the seductive domain of Polo Ralph Lauren, where he became associate director of menswear design. He reveals the mystique of department-store politics, what's what at the sample sale, and who copies whom. He explains the process of making great clothes, from conception and sketch to manufacturing and marketing.

Whether he's traveling by daredevil horse, plunging plane, Paris Métro, or cross-country limo, Abboud is an illuminating guide to a complex world.

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I Saw a Bullfrog

Ellen Stern

Everyone knows what a bullfrog looks like...and a catfish. Don't they? What if these creatures looked just like their names--half one animal and half another? Here' an imaginary menagerie--from the cowbird to the zebra fish--richly illustrated in full color and with stunning detail. Each animal is introduced by a poem that speculates about what such a curiously named creature might be like. Also included is a glossary of facts about the real animals that inspired the author to create the imaginary ones.

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Other editions: Hardcover - 2003

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Sister Sets: Sisters Whose Togetherness Sets Them Apart

Ellen Stern; Emily Gwathmey; Ellen Stock Stern

Here are such devoted and undevoted sisters as Jackie and Lee Bouvier, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, Cinderella and her wicked stepsisters, the literary Bronte sisters, the Toni twins and the Doublemint twins, and vaudeville's Cherry Sisters, the worst sister act in the history of show business. Emily Gwathmey and Ellen Stern offer a lively look at sisters in the spotlight. Meet Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, identical twins with parallel careers and a zigzag relationship; Sadie and Bessie Delany, lovingly together for almost a century; Lillian and Dorothy Gish, who co-starred in each other's lives as well as in the birth of Hollywood; the all-American Andrews Sisters, peppy and patriotic songbirds; the Dionne Quintuplets, whose adorable lookalike exploits mesmerized the world while traumatizing them; Siamese-twin actresses Violet and Daisy Hilton, literally joined at the hip; Margaret and Kate Fox, whose seances raised spirits in the 1850s; and the Hill sisters, who wrote "Happy Birthday", the most popular American song ever. Weaving a stunning tapestry of photographs, paintings, movie stills, song sheets, posters, ads, and other ephemera, Sister Sets swings from the boardwalk to Broadway, Mount Olympus to the English moors, Madison Avenue to Hollywood, the Bible to the burlesque house.

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Once upon a Telephone

Ellen Stern

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A Passion for Red

Ellen Stern; Ellen Stock Stern; Nancy Weber

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Once upon a Telephone: An Illustrated Social History

Ellen Stern; Emily Gwathmey

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The Very Best from Hallmark: Greeting Cards Through the Years

Ellen Stern

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