About

Rachel Elspeth Gross

I really love my work and I learned very early that the stories about the people who make the most beautiful clothing in the world offered stimulating intellectual puzzles I could find no where else. 

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Stories are my favorite thing in the world and I spend as much time as I possibly can wrapped up in them. A lot of them are books, I read all kinds of books, trying any and everything, fiction and nonfiction. Books are required for both work and pleasure (in the few instances where those two things are different) and because consuming vast quantities of deftly written decadent language, or slowly savoring a paragraph or twelve of exceptionally languid prose is a necessary component to my version of self care.

I love to read, though please know, it is not (only) formal, ancient, or otherwise pedantic (not exactly the right definition, but read: academic) literature, nor is the scope of my reading hobbled by blinders and focused straight down the path of the always-oncoming Western canon. If we are talking about fiction, I am enamoured of a good private detective novel, I read a massive number of thrillers and mysteries each year. Horror is a favorite genre, and outside of such dull labels, my favorite stories are always the ones which are as beautiful as they are fundamentally disturbing.  

When I was little, my mother was a children’s librarian and I would have lived in the library if the adults had not insisted otherwise. This could be why I am so omnivorous where genre and other content categories are concerned. Outside of my (obvious) interest in haute couture history, fashion and costume design, I am always happy to read about 19th and early 20th century Arctic and Antarctic exploration. I like westerns a lot too, the history more than the fiction generally (especially the history of Deadwood, South Dakota) but with space always reserved for a fine new example of a well-written western. Like E. L. Doctorow's Welcome To Hard Times, or Trevanian's Incident at 20-Mile, darker stuff like that. No John Wayne, I’m not into bigots.

I am probably obsessed with WWII. If you have been reading my work for any period of time, then you know this already. The haute couture collections produced in the tiny window between the end of the European theater of World War Two (which means the Theatre de la Mode doll collections from 1945 and 1946) and December 31, 1949 is my favorite time period in fashion history. 

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I am always happy to talk about books and clothing.

Questions? Need my help? Want to hire Me?

Send me a message, I'd love to hear from you.     -Rachel