Cool Mothers

Cool Mothers: An Appreciation of Style celebrates what our mothers wore and how their style choices reflected, challenged, and shaped the world around them. Some mothers are punk, others are hippies, chic power dressers, or free-spirited bohemians. Many resist labels altogether.

These richly illustrated pages offer a joyful celebration of our mothers' clothes and how their style choices—practical, political, or deeply personal—left a lasting imprint on the culture around us. Cool Mothers: An Appreciation of Style places maternal style exactly where it belongs: at the centre of fashion history.

A jacket, a handbag, a hairclip, a bracelet worn every day for decades—these details define our mothers as women of their time, subtly revealing the person beyond the role of motherhood, what they resisted, what they embraced, and how they balanced selfhood with responsibility.

Perfect for mothers, fashion lovers, and anyone interested in the rich intersection of motherhood, identity, and dress. Featuring such distinctly stylish mothers as Angela Missioni, Elizabeth Taylor, Josephine Baker, Princess Diana, Vivienne Westwood, Courtney Love, and many others.

AUTHOR: Terry Newman is a best-selling author whose work spans fashion, music, and cultural history. She has written a wide-ranging series of music and fashion biographies on major contemporary artists including Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Billie Eilish, examining the intersection of style, identity, and popular culture. She has written acclaimed fashion history books including Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore and Legendary Artists and the Clothes They Wore. She is also the author of Marilyn Style, created in collaboration with Marilyn Monroe's estate.

Her wider work includes consulting on documentaries about Twiggy and Mary Quant, as well as contributions to i-D's Fashion Now, Fashion Now 2, and Soul i-D. Earlier in her career, Terry worked in the fashion industry throughout the 1990s as an editor at i-D, Attitude, and Self Service, and as a writer for The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and The Sunday Times. She also wrote and presented fashion programmes for Channel 4, including She's Gotta Have It and Slave. Today, she is an Assistant Professor at Regent's University London, where she teaches alongside her writing and research.

SELLING POINTS:

• A chic, witty, and thoughtful gift for mothers everywhere
• A wide-ranging and intelligent survey: from punk to hippie to quiet icons of maternal elegance
• Beautifully illustrated throughout: with carefully curated archive and contemporary imagery
• Interviews with famously fashionable mothers: from Angela Missioni to Courtney Love
• Covers multiple decades of women's fashion: offers cultural insight as well as a visual treat for all devotees of style
• Written by Terry Newman: author of the bestselling And the Clothes They Wear series

100 colour, 85 b/w illustrations.