BEST DRESSED: Chronicles of an Era of Decadence in Fashion
Price range: $12.99 through $49.99
BEST DRESSED is a literary novel structured as a cultural exhibition — an anatomy of power told through fashion, institutions, and the women who learn how to survive them.
Set inside the closed world of Crown, the most influential fashion magazine of its era, the novel traces how authority is constructed, performed, protected, and ultimately transferred.
Moving from South London pubs to Havana hotel rooms, from couture ateliers to the Met Gala staircase, BEST DRESSED reveals fashion not as fantasy, but as a governing system — one
that rewards obedience, monetizes rebellion, and disciplines bodies under the guise of taste.
At its center is Eleanore Kingsley, a woman who rose from illegitimacy and invisibility to become the most powerful cultural gatekeeper of her generation. Around her orbit editors,
designers, assistants, interns, celebrities, and opportunists,each learning, at different costs, that proximity to power is never neutral. Figures like Ceci Swanson, Jimmy Stuart, Francesca
Ricci, and Ashley Madison embody different strategies of survival: endurance, elegance, control, spectacle. None emerge unmarked.
Spanning the late 1990s through the rise of digital influence circa 2014, the novel interrogates pivotal cultural moments — the illegal Cuba shoot, the Versace years, Fashion’s Night Out,
the fall of McQueen and Galliano, the weaponization of inclusion, and the collapse of centralized authority with the advent of Crown.com. These moments are not treated as gossip, but as
satirical case studies in how institutions absorb scandal, rewrite history, and maintain dominance.
Formally, BEST DRESSED is structured as a museum-style exhibition, with each chapter operating as a gallery: immersive, curated, confrontational, The reader does not simply follow a
narrative— they move through it, room by room, absorbing how power feels in the body before it is understood intellectually.
The novel asks:
Who controls culture when culture becomes currency?
What happens to women who master systems built to consume them?
And when power finally shifts, who is left commanding fashion’s future?
BEST DRESSED is The Devil Wears Prada stripped of comedy, The First Monday in May without institutional loyalty, and a post-MeToo reckoning that refuses easy villains. It is a story about
taste as authority, silence as survival, and the moment when attention replaces competence as the ultimate form of power.
| Weight | 25.0 lbs |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 18.62 × 15.55 × 2.95 in |
| Cover | Signed Hard Copy, Hard Cover, Soft Cover |
The Author: Filipa Fino
Filipa Fino is a fashion editor, creative director, author, and entrepreneur whose career spans the highest levels of global fashion media, luxury brand development, and fashion
technology.
She began her career at Harper’s Bazaar before advancing to senior leadership roles at Allure and later Vogue , Vogue.com, and affiliate publications Men’s Vogue and Vogue Living, as
well as hosting a weekly segment on Live Vogue TV, where she served for nearly a decade as Accessories Director and Senior Accessories Editor. Reporting directly to Anna Wintour, she
led all accessories and jewelry coverage, including Need It Now, Accessories File, Last Look, and Duly Noted monthly bylined featured content, while shaping trends at the intersection of
editorial, retail, and luxury branding. Her work included close collaboration with leading fashion houses and emerging designers, advising global conglomerates such as LVMH, for which
she fostered the Louis Vuitton Pharrell Williams Sneaker Collection collaboration and the Bono / LVMH Red Handbag Collection; Kering, where she worked directly with Balenciaga’s
Creative Director and Designer Nicolas Ghesquiere and accessories team in expanding the Le City Signature Bag Collection; Richemont for which she contributed to the relaunch of the
Van Cleef & Arpels ‘ Alhambra Collection; Cartier, with whom she participated in the creation of The Love on Cord Charity Bracelet; Tiffany & Co., with whom she propelled the
partnership with renowned architect Frank Geary to create a signature jewelry collection; and Coach, on revamping the brand back to its historical heritage with the relaunch of the
iconic Tabby and Bleeker Bucket bags; and Nike, with whom she participated in the development of the personalized sneaker on-line service, Nike ID , currently called Nike By You ,
allowing users to customize the colors, materials, and add personal ID’s to various shoe models. She was also instrumental in advising product placement and market growth, recruiting
talent for the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund, and contributing to major cultural initiatives including CFDA Health Initiative , Fashion Rocks Concert, 7 on Sale , Fashion’s Night Out, for which
she designed and coordinated production, global distribution, and sales of the event’s logo tote bag, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art ‘s Costume Institute exhibitions and The Met
Gala, not only curating all accessories elements on display in the yearly gallery exhibit , but also advocating patronage and hosting key influential Accessories houses in helping raise
more than fifty million dollars for the museum.
