The Power of Style (1994) in photographs and text, showcases fourteen international women who defined fashion, decorating and entertaining in the twentieth century. It was an opportunity to explore my interest in style; what defines it, how a person develops style and whether it can be taught or is intrinsic. Its publication arrived at just the right moment, went through twelve printings and sold close to 100,000 copies, largely thanks to a major shift in the early 1990s when style began to take precedence over fashion. The Power of Glamour (1998) profiles eleven actresses from the Golden Age of Cinema. The idea of modern glamour came from Hollywood, starting in the silent era and lasting until the start of World War II. These women embodied star power on and off the screen, which was not just about appearance but also intrigue, mystery, and the art of revealing just enough. It explored an era when glamour meant something closer to magic, akin to glamour’s original meaning: Witchcraft.
“Filled with tales of dreams and drive, Annette Tapert’s The Power of Style was the fashionable world’s favorite book of 1994. By profiling in both words and pictures the century’s most beguiling women, Style managed to do the near impossible: shed new light on its fourteen real-life stars from Elsie de Wolfe to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. This month, Tapert returns with an equally accomplished follow-up, The Power of Glamour – and this time she has real stars in her sites: eleven Hollywood actresses who embody the “glamour” era of the 1930s featuring enduring legends (Swanson, Garbo, and Dietrich) and now faded ones, including Kay Francis and Constance Bennet. Glamour proves that Mae West was right: “A real star,” she said, “never stops.”
- John Cantrell, Town & Country, November, 1998
“The women profiled in The Power of Style were chosen for many reasons: their enduring fashionability, their invention of certain customs or modes of dress, their patronage of the arts and their involvement with the greats of their time, for their extreme natural beauty or their beautiful ugliness, and for their own creativity.”
- Emily Prager, The New York Times, June 1995
“Gianni Versace who opened the shows here Saturday night said his influence this season was the book The Power of Style: The Women Who Defined the Art of Living Well by Annette Tapert”
- Amy Spindler, The New York Times (reporting from Paris), January, 1995
“Annette Tapert’s fascinating The Power of Glamour like so many of the films in which the actresses of whom she writes starred, is slick, fast-moving and compulsive.”
“It is easy to see the evident self-love of the stars as narcissistic, but they knew what they had to do in return for their privileged existence. Film stars have always been expected to live our imagined lives for us, which they did by being incredibly glamourus.”
- Colin McDowell, The Sunday Times (London), February, 1999
“Stylish author, Annette Tapert’s The Power of Glamour, has mined Hollywood to come up with examples of women who change the electricity in a room just by entering it. Glamourous actresses who refined their carefully cultivated film images for their private lives.”
- Cynthia Robins, San Francisco Examiner, November 1998
SLIM (1990), with style icon Slim Keith, was my first celebrity collaboration. After writing sample chapters that captured her voice --- drawing on my background as an actress --- she chose me despite my limited résumé. Slim died two months before the publication, but not before approving the manuscript. I wish she had been alive to enjoy the positive reviews her memoir received and its climb to the New York Times Bestseller list. SIEGFRIED & ROY (1992) I met the German super-star magicians in 1990. Thanks to my previous work and, amusingly, because of my German heritage and astrological compatibility they chose me to be their collaborator. Writing a dual memoir posed its own challenges, having to create distinct voices for each man. The project was an extraordinary learning experience. Swifty (1995). Irving Paul “Swifty” Lazar, the legendary super-agent, first approached me in 1992 about writing his book. Following complicated negotiations, I declined his offer. A year later, having read a Vanity Fair profile I wrote about him, he asked me once again to write his memoir, this time with respect for his co-author. The book was published posthumously in March 1995, shortly after his death. I remember walking into Doubleday Book Shop in New York and seeing a huge banner with the book jacket blown up to grand proportion --- a fitting tribute to a five- foot three larger than life dynamo.
“She calls her book Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life; she might just as well have called it ''How I Married for Love, Status and Money and Managed to Keep Two Out of Three When the Marriages Ended.'' Women who do it don't usually write about it. Her peers didn't have her directness, and her successors don't have her charm.”
- Margo Jefferson, The New York Times, March 1990
“Mostly this memoir, Swifty: My Life and Good Times, is about deals, deals, deals. But, just when the talk about deals begins to grow tiresome, blessed relief Mr. Lazar’s collaborator, Annette Tapert comes forth in her epilogue to show us another dimension of the man she calls “not simply a single-minded flesh-peddler… Tapert concludes Irving Lazar was smaller than a minute, but bigger than life who in his long march to model himself on men he considered classier… somehow turned himself into a far more original creature than his betters.”
- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times, March 1995
“My first anthology, inspired by my aunt’s recollections of letters from her husband during World War II, Despatches From The Heart (1984), featured letters from British soldiers to their loved ones during wartime. I realized the power and universality of such correspondence, so I appealed to readers through national newspapers in England and was overwhelmed by the response. As a result, two additional anthologies were produced about American servicemen: Lines of Battle: Letters from American Servicemen 1941-1945 and The Brothers’ War: Civil War Letters To Their Loved Ones From The Blue And Gray.”
“Generals' memoirs are all very well and so are military histories, but to convey what war is really like, one must go to the soldier. This book of letters from World War II, Lines of Battle: Letters from American Servicemen 1941-1945, skillfully edited by Annette Tapert, who earlier produced a similar volume in Britain, paints a picture of living and fighting a war from the standpoint of the men who were doing it. The letters are the thoughts and words of men who, in the words of a Marine dive-bomber pilot, just want to get back home with their wives, or get back to a job, or work on a farm.”
- David Murray, New York times Book Review, 1987
SWID POWELL: Objects by Architects (1990). This monograph documented Nan Swid and Addie Powell’s pioneering company, which produced table-top accessories designed by prominent international architects. Interviewing the architects was a steep learning curve, but my love for decorative objects helped me bring fresh perspective to the book. Jeffrey Bilhuber’s Design Basics (2003). Initially hesitant to take on another collaboration, I changed my mind after hearing Jeffrey Bilhuber’s vision for a book that would make great design accessible to everyone --- not just those who could afford to hire interior designers. Timeless Elegance: The Houses of David Easton (2010). I met David Easton when interviewing him for Architectural Digest in the 1990s, and we quickly became friends. For years he dreamed of writing a book akin to Edith Wharton’s 1897 seminal book, The Decoration of Houses. I never dissuaded him from this lofty idea, but I also didn’t encourage it. David had carved out a distinctive niche for himself as a classicist with a bent toward creating grand Georgian-style interiors and he became one of the most sought-after architects and interior designers in 1980s’ America. David’s husband, Jimmy Steinmeyer, knew that David should have a book that documented his work in a straightforward way. When Jimmy told me that he had spent two years commissioning photography of all of David’s interiors that were still intact, including some that had never been published, I volunteered to write the book that would honor his legacy.