From the Garment District’s fashionable 34th Street address in New York City, to the sewer-infested manufacturing sweatshops of Asia, the author recalls almost 50 years of professional achievement, counterbalanced by personal trauma at the hands of the men she trusted.
For nearly half a century, Darlene Parris Young had a successful career in the modeling industry, gracing the covers of magazines and walking the runways. It was the glamour days of New York City’s Garment District, where the crime families battled for business; $20,000 fur coats and designer dresses traveled the streets on racks, propelled by the garmento’s trustees and, at the same time, buyers from the national department store chains were writing orders, crafted over champagne, cigars and beautiful models in the showroom.
It is during these glory years of Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Diane von Furstenberg, and Gloria Vanderbilt, that this penetrating look into New York’s fashion industry is seen through the eyes of the little known, but highly paid, “fashion fit model” – the behind the scenes living mannequin who used her body as a template for the designers’ fashions. Constantly in demand, working ten to twelve hours per day, Darlene became known as “The Coat Hanger with a Mouth” for her outspoken interactions with designers, explaining to these fashion “icons” what women truly wanted in clothes, with the result of increasing the “bosses’” revenue for whom she worked, year after year.
Yet, Darlene would return home at night, longing to be a mother and a wife, yet finding conflict with her husband and too exhausted to be a mother. Her children would grow and leave, while she learned that marriages were hardly a sanctuary from disappointment.
Unzipped is not merely a story about modeling and NYC’s garment industry, though exciting as it may be. Unzipped is written for all women who have faced abuse and trauma; women who have encountered harassment in the workplace; women who have felt the resulting despair and loneliness of long, solitary nights, and who have worried whether the future holds any hope for happiness and love.
Unzipped is a story of human trials, beginning with a highly decorated World War II father who equated discipline with physical abuse; through a series of failed marriages and, finally, the object of an unspeakable act of violence that no woman should endure.
Speaking for all women who have been told what to wear, what to say, what to believe and how to act, Unzipped will have you laughing and crying, opening your heart to long-forgotten emotions and strengthening your resolve to prevail. As you witness Darlene learning to become a voice, not a victim, you will drop your jaw with disbelief on each new page; you will be left with a determination to put the past behind and you will find comfort – as well as a renewed strength - in knowing with certainty that you are not alone!
