Kuwait-Style.com

This is the third book review from the Kuwait-Style.com Fashionable Reading corner.

Falling Out of Fashion by Karen Yampolsky was an interesting read. It’s a fictional account of editor-in-chief Jill White’s story of how she came to run her own magazine and its subsequent downfall. It’s a roman à clef with a twist. This book doesn’t cover Karen’s story but apparently that of Jane Pratt.

Who is Jane Pratt? She was the creator of Jane magazine. Karen Yampolsky worked with Jane Pratt, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Jane magazine for many years. You can draw many parallels between the book and the real life story of Jane Pratt’s rise and fall at Sassy and Jane.

Karen names the chief magazine in her book, Jill, a magazine named after the founder the same way Jane is named after its founder. She also hints at several events that have been rather prominent in Jane Pratt’s life. In Falling Out of Fashion, Karen mentions how a former child actress befriends Jill by nearly having a tryst with her and subsequently lands the cover of the first issue. Drew Barrymore was on the first cover of Jane magazine and Jane Pratt was on the Howard Stern show claiming to tell the truth about her relationship with Drew. In Jill, it is a celebrity named Rory Bellmore, who was a child actress, who lands the cover of the first issue.

These parallels make the book an interesting read because it draws you into imagining what it must have been like for Jane Pratt to see her magazine flourish and then fail. At times I grew bored by the book but stuck by it until the end, and I was happy I did.

Karen’s ficitional account of Jill magazine predicted the magazine’s demise and in July Jane closed its doors. Jane’s final issue was August 2007.