was that design for dying by renee patrick?? i literally just saw that at the library and the premise had me ????? was it bad in a 'please don't read this' type of bad; or bad in a 'well. at least i had fun!' way? i gotta know if i should read it for the hell of it 😂
pretentiousness under the cut!
I had fun—I got through it in like two days—but it's not well-written, and it doesn't fully explore how costume design could lead to a great detective story. I think all my quibbles are just it could have been so much better 😭
For a little synopsis: a friend of our heroine Lillian is found dead in an alleyway dressed in clothes that don't belong to her. Lillian dives into trying to solve the mystery with the guidance of Edith Head, involved because the dead girl's clothes come from Paramount.
Design for Dying has a fun concept but suffers from a truly surprising lack of understanding how costume design works and some critical flaws in the writing. Lillian, our heroine, is an inconsistent first-person narrator, and not in the sexy intentionally-lying-to-the-reader way. She's written so she always says, or feels, whatever comes across as witty in the moment, but unfortunately leads to inconsistent characterization and weird moments where things presented and accepted by the story as fact—Lillian's sensible, she's not an actress, she has no wish to be an actress—completely disappear whenever the writers need her to be something different. She says she can't act, then successfully pretends she's a journalist. Other characters call her resourceful, but she frequently doesn't know what she's doing and is brought to a conclusion by somebody else. Alliances and friendships come and go in weird ways—we're repeatedly told the former friend was trouble, yet she is nothing but kind to Lillian in flashbacks, and it makes no sense Lillian would pursue her killer so doggedly if she genuinely has no attachment to the dead girl. It's also hard to accept why so many characters conveniently decide to spill everything they know to Lillian, someone they just met, and why everyone always tells the absolute truth once this starts. (Facts tend to build onto each other in neat blocks, with no twists or red herrings until the very end.)
My other issue with Design for Dying—much more pedantic—is that it's a damn shame to see such a great concept (mystery in old hollywood!) not used to its fullest extent. Edith Head drifts in and out, but the story doesn't really use her skills—Lillian borrows wardrobe from the stock room, and Head correctly clocks a few costume pieces that belong to her studio, but for such a clearly researched book there is a void here on what Head's contribution to design actually was. The book often shoves her in the easy role of Edna Mode-ish fashion deity, quickly telling Lillian how to adjust her belt to fix her proportions or complimenting her shoes. But it misses, completely, the notion that Head strove to communicate to the Hollywood industry as a whole: that clothing conveys character, deeply and subconsciously, and those who know how to read clothes have a better understanding of the human character than those who assume it's just pretty fashions. For a detective story, this a bonanza that's left on the table. Design for Dying's superhero-detective Edith Head never uses her skill at reading clothes to clock a criminal, see through a lie, or gauge a phony backstory; when one character indiscriminately steals costumes in her size from stock to masquerade as someone else, nobody points out what a miracle it is that the clothes randomly grabbed add up to the character she wants to play. Edith should see that! Edith, of all people, would know you can't grab just any jacket and convince someone you're a millionaire. But this book rolls right past the meaning of all of the clothes, keeping the character of Edith in place without the spirit of her work.
Lastly, it's also just a shame to see the Hollywood studios portrayed purely as places where (every single time) Lillian walks into them, a famous and storied name is hanging out, solo and perfect, to drop a bon mot and then leave. (Why is Bob Hope here. Why is Martha Raye.) Studios had stars, yes, but they also had thriving working class presences—the grips, the electrics, the cameramen, the Black security guards and wardrobe workers, the Spanish-speaking craftswomen making all of Edith's designs—hundreds of eyes and ears walking around a studio, lives as full and interesting as the glamorous names that are so much more easily known, the perfect people to plot a murder or spy one in the dark. It's a shame that Design for Dying's Paramount is such a ghost town, and so much of the story is preoccupied with rising or failing actresses, when a much richer story could be had by zoning in on the crews, the normal folks, working in the magic to make the movies but never getting the glory.
Lillian also falls, immediately and for no good reason, in love with a guy from the LAPD. insufferable behavior. i'm sorry queen but absolutely nobody needed that
