Wear and Tear

Tracy Tynan uses the universal medium of clothing to tell the highly specific story of her bohemian British upbringing, and she does so with wit, candor, and yesstyle (Lena Dunham).Tracy Peacock Tynan grew up in London in the 1950s and 60s, privy to her parents glamorous parties and famous friendsLaurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, and Orson Welles. Cecil Beaton and Katharine Hepburn were her godparents. These stylish showbiz people were role models for Tracy, who became a clotheshorse at a young age. Tracys 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 Tracys parents, particularly her father, were known as much for what they wore as what they wrote. In her moving, candid, and often hilarious memoir (Wall Street Journal), Tracy recalls her fathers dandy attire and her mothers Pucci dresses, as well as her parents rancorous marriage and divorce, her fathers prodigious talents and celebrity lifestyle, and her mothers lifelong struggle with addiction. She tackles issues big and smallrelationships, marriage, children, stepchildren, blended families, her parents decline and deaths, and her work as a costume designerwith humor, insight, and with the special joy that can only come from finding the perfect outfit. A powerful concoction of famous names, famous fashions, and famous psychiatric disordersWear and Tear is just the thing for a weekend in the Hamptons (New York Post).