"As the British fashion industry took off in the post-war period, the figure of the photographic fashion model rapidly came to represent a new mode of femininity: independent, successful, and fashionably dressed. Fashioning a Life explores the wealth of life writing surrounding these glamourous 'Model Girls', from autobiography and memoir to advice literature. The book draws on a wealth of archival research and the writing of professional women in the field - including Jean Shrimpton, Mary Quant, and Janey Ironside - and explores these narratives through the lens of the popular culture and mass media of the late 1950s and 1960s"--