It's All About the Dress: What I Learned in 40 Years About Men, Women, Sex, and Fashion

The original purveyor of the miniskirt and Elizabeth Taylor's caftan unravels fabulous, chatty tales of her early success in the 1960s as a young American fashion designer in Paris. A student of Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, Tiel became known around Greenwich Village as Peaches LaTour for her original, thrift-store, bohemian look (leather mini, lace stockings, boots), creating sexy looks that delighted her boyfriends but shocked the establishment. Along with a well-connected schoolmate, Mia Fonssagrives (stepdaughter of Irving Penn), Tiel aimed to take Paris by storm, and they did, within a few months of arriving in 1963, with the help of former top model Dorian Leigh (aka Holly Golightly) and fashion designer Louis F%C3%A9raud. From doing the costumes for movies like What's New, Pussycat? ("Ursula Andress taught me the power of a dress") to dressing Elizabeth Taylor for more than 20 years, Tiel was the "it" girl. By turns nutty and tender, she offers priceless anecdotes about Liz and Richard, Romy Schneider and Alain Delon, Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, hippies, and dating married men. (Aug.)