WIFE DRESSING: THE FINE ART OF BEING A WELL-DRESSED WIFE
By Anne Fogarty.
196 pp. Glitterati Inc.
$25.
SEDUCING THE BOYS CLUB:
Uncensored Tactics from a Woman at the Top
By Nina DiSesa.
240 pp. Ballantine.
$25.
IF the drag queen John Epperson — better known by his diva name, Lypsinka (she of the arched brows, Joan Crawford lips and not-so-well-contained hysteria) — is looking for inspiration for his next one-woman show, he need look no further.
The re-release of a popular 1959 fashion guide, “Wife Dressing,” written by the thrice-divorced tastemaker and dressmaker Anne Fogarty (who championed petticoats, fur handbags and tightly belted coveralls, and also created a dress line that was a hit at Lord & Taylor) would give him plenty of material, with crinolines to spare.
Ms. Fogarty was a woman who never had fewer than six sets of pajamas in her “active sleep wardrobe”; who took 20 pairs of shoes for a 10-day vacation in Boca Raton, Fla.; who traveled to Europe with 22 petticoats (at customs in Ireland, a suitcase holding 18 of them exploded like a comedian’s can of snakes); and who once woke her husband at the beach before breakfast by ironing petticoats on her side of the bed. Strangely, despite the faultless wardrobe, the marriage didn’t last.
Ms. Fogarty instructs wives to wear lovely “pinafores, organdies and aprons” and “gay cotton wrap-arounds” while scrambling eggs for breakfast, because “the kitchen is your natural setting as a woman and you should look beautiful, not bedraggled in it.”
Is this the stuff of comedy or tragedy?
There’s a lot of affection in this workaholic, come-as-you-are age for the ladylike Jackie-O era, when women didn’t leave the house without girdles or white cotton gloves (one of Ms. Fogarty’s fixations). This book, as it amuses however mildly and accidentally, shows the folly of such nostalgia.
WOMEN’S outlets for creative energy have multiplied in recent years, but in her candid, opinionated and shrewd memoir of her career in the ad business, “Seducing the Boys Club,” Nina DiSesa, the chairwoman of McCann Erickson New York, writes that when she entered the field in the ’80s, it was male-dominated. She had to learn new survival skills quickly to keep up.
“Men and women are not equal in the business world,” she writes. “We are managed, rewarded, and regarded differently even when we do the exact same job.” Early in her career, she abided by good-girl rules — “I believed in fair play,” she explains. But when fair play didn’t work, she adopted the strategies her male colleagues used to thrive. That meant making sure she got credit when it counted. It meant asking for promotions. It meant being institutionally and personally loyal. But it also meant neutralizing people who were undermining her authority, rather than ignoring them (a typical, self-defeating feminine tactic, she argues).
But Ms. DiSesa did not neglect her softer side. Overcoming the notion that “using feminine wiles was cheating,” she incorporated womanly skills into the male playbook — deploying her powers of observation to correctly “read a room” during client pitches; nurturing male colleagues so they would feel secure enough to collaborate with one another; protecting egos by burying criticism in artful praise; yet maintaining respect by punishing subordinates when they misbehaved. She also soft-pedaled her hard sells by flirting — or “invisible persuasion” as she prefers to call it.
This us-and-them approach has dismayed some, who consider Ms. DiSesa’s vision of the gender battle (and her defense of flirting) about as retrogressive as, say, a 1950’s manual on wife-dressing ... and a lot more adversarial. Certainly, hers is not an idealized portrait of the workplace.
Nonetheless, there can be no doubt of the personal truth of the experiences she describes, or of the fact that she has written this book with the intention of helping other working women. Since Ms. DiSesa became McCann’s first woman executive creative director in 1994 (she was promoted to chairwoman a decade ago), four of her female colleagues have broken through what she calls the “Plexiglas barrier” to high executive positions there. She applauds their promotions, even as she warns that “it’s dangerous at the top of the ladder.”
Do women still need this map? Perhaps some will be lucky enough to achieve their ambitions without ever feeling the need to take an immersion course in deviousness. But as a sign of how useful many people have judged Ms. DiSesa’s book, it was in the top 200 on Amazon.com in the first weeks after its release. It should come as no surprise that an ace ad-woman like Ms. DiSesa would know how to make readers want something they’re not sure they need.
To echo the MasterCard campaign she midwifed: Checking out this book? $25. Deciding you didn’t necessarily need its advice? Priceless.