Product Description

Who set's today's new trends? At the beginning of a new millennium, who is it that defines what is fashionable, who has the true will to create, who knows how to make glamour a lifestyle? Bright Young Things introduces us to some of the most prominent members of America's younger generation, the high-flyers who set the style, pace and attitudes of their time such as Alexandra and Alexandre von Furstenberg, Aerin Lauder and Eric Zinterhofer, Damian Loeb, Moby, Marina Rust, Andrew Lauren, Serena Altschul, to name a few. And what makes this young, dynamic, styleish group quite interesting, visible and somewhat powerful, is that they are all extremely accomplished individuals in their personal lives, as well as being very accomplished leaders in their relative fields - business, arts, literature, music, movie production, fashion designing, etc. We discover their house, interior and the lives they lead. With contributions by Bill Blass, Brooke Astor, Oscar de la Renta, Diane von Furstenberg, Anh Duong, Carolina Herrera, among others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #842876 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Review
"This incredibly fashionable and high-profile group is redefining society style."

Customer Reviews

Please don't further fuel these people's narcissism
You know, my grandmother always taught me that wealth and success were blessings to be appreciated and contemplated in private, and to be grateful for because they are distributed unequally and can disappear at any time. I have to wonder what these people's families taught them, besides the lie that money makes you important and you have this wealth because you are somehow just better than other people. The vulgarity and transparent social ambition of the participants in this book just make the whole exercise in narcissism that much more lame. The bad design, bad attitudes, bad values, and ignorance on display here show a real waste of the doubtless costly education lavished on these children of vanity and greed. They would be pitiable if they weren't so arrogant.

And their apartments are mostly just really ugly.

ha! I know most of these people and...
My husband and I know most of these people from college and the New York party circuit and let me tell you this book is a joke! If you think that these women really have "careers" or grace and style of their own then we have a bridge in this town which you might be interested in purchasing to go along with your copy of this book...Brooke is preying on their vanities and insecurities in order to boost her profile-although from the quality of her writing you can tell that she is not much more intelligent than the BYT's. Her subjects are fun people however to admire them would be not only inappropriate but foolish-let's just say I laughed so hard, this book should listed under "humour".

Slumming on Park Avenue
I tried to come up with all sorts of ways to poke fun at the pretentiousness of this book, but really, what's the point? If beautiful people in New York City want to create a volume in which they can feature other beautiful people, their beautiful homes and beautiful families, and write glowingly about the beautiful lives they lead, and then sell it to themselves, the envious, and the just plain nosy, who am I to complain?

Far more risible is the introduction by William Norwich, in which "these meritocrats -- don't call them aristocrats" are painted not only as the apotheosis of style, but also of social concern, enlightened world view, forward-looking design, and folks-next-door approachability. In fact, three quarters of these "meritocrats" I'd never heard of before ... and most of those whose names I recognized (Guinness, Lauder, Herrera, another Lauder, Von Furstenburg [and one of the Miller sisters], Hermès, etc.) came more from their families' prosperity and fame than from the meritocratic achievements of the individuals themselves.

Still, the pictures are pretty enough, and the writing (apart from Norwich's) unobjectionable. And maybe it wasn't the subjects' fault they showed up in this embarrassing book. If one of my friends called up and said she was assembling a picture book of obscure Seattle book reviewers and wanted me in it, I might oblige her just out of friendship. But I'd make sure not to leave my copy sitting around where visitors could see it.

In all, this title has a certain voyeuristic value, from the pre-September 11 era. But I hope those of us outside the rarified little world of New York Society don't take it for a lot more than that.