Wear and Tear: The Threads of My Life

Wear and Tear: The Threads of My Life

A candid, entertaining memoir told through clothes.

Tracy Peacock Tynan grew up in London in the 1950â€™s and 60s, privy to her parentsâ€™ glamorous parties and famous friendsâ€”Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, and Orson Welles. Cecil Beaton and Katharine Hepburn were her godparents. Tracy was named after Katherine Hepburnâ€™s character, Tracy Lord, in the classic film, The Philadelphia Story. These stylish showbiz people were role models for Tracy, who became a clotheshorse at a young age.

Tracyâ€™s father, Kenneth Tynan, was a powerful theater critic and writer for the Evening Standard, The Observer, and The New Yorker. Her mother was Elaine Dundy, a successful novelist and biographer, whose works have recently been revived by The New York Review of Books. Both of Tracyâ€™s parents, particularly her father, were known as much for what they wore as what they wrote.

In the Tynansâ€™ social circles, style was essential, and Tracy had firm ideas about her own clothing for as long as she can remember. Shopping was an art passed down through the family; though shopping trips with her mother were so traumatic that Tracy started shopping on her own when she was fourteen.

When Tracy started writing about her life she found that clothing was the focus of many of her stories. She recalls her fatherâ€™s dandy attire and her motherâ€™s Pucci dresses, as well as her parentsâ€™ rancorous marriage and divorce, her fatherâ€™s prodigious talents and celebrity lifestyle, and her motherâ€™s lifelong struggle with addiction. She tackles issues big and small using clothes as an entrÃ©eâ€”relationships, marriage, children, stepchildren, blended families, her parentâ€™s decline and deaths, and her work as a costume designer are all recounted with humor, with insight, and with the special joy that can only come from finding the perfect outfit.
Country USA
Manufacturer Scribner
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-07-12
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Scribner
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2016-07-12
Format	Kindle eBook

Wear and Tear: The Threads of My Life

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