“A lot of people asked me about writing a memoir; I had been thinking about it for a long time,” Banks said. “They’d say, ‘you tell the best stories, you have such great memories,’ but I always felt it was too egocentric and self-centric…too ‘me-me-me’ and ‘I-I-I.’”
But helping Stan Herman, a former CFDA president, with his memoir gave him a new perspective on the oeuvre. Marylou Luther further encouraged him a have to write proposal, and, during the first few weeks of the pandemic, he fastidiously inked said proposal together. The book was picked up by Pointed Leaf Press.
Why now?
“My mother is 104; I wanted to try to get this done so she would have a chance to read it,” Banks said. “My intent was to talk about all the interesting and fascinating people I met on this journey of being in the fashion business. I have been so lucky to have met, worked with, and learned from incredible people like Polly Mellen, Bruce Weber, Calvin, Ralph, Audrey Hepburn, and Avedon.”
Along the way, he picked up a few invaluable lessons. “Having worked for Ralph first and known him since I was 16, the most important thing I learned from him is to have integrity of product and to never compromise the vision. He’s held fast onto his vision of how he sees his customer and the product he provides them with without compromise. He gives it his absolute best.”
That exacting way always reminded him of his cartographer father. “My strive for perfection, that uncompromising, exacting position, came from him and from Ralph.”
After Ralph came Calvin, “a brilliant merchandizer and marketeer,” he said. “He has this ability to understand what people wanted before they even knew they wanted it.”
The book also includes anecdotes about Audrey Hepburn, Barbra Streisand, and Richard Avedon, whom he met at a Macy’s in San Francisco event celebrating Avedon’s book of photographs.
Mellen and Perry Ellis also became good friends and Banks was appalled when he witnessed the reaction of two women on a Summer Friday afternoon upon seeing the New York Post cover announcing Ellis’s passing: They said they can’t wear their Perry Ellis dresses anymore for fear of contracting AIDS.
“I said, first of all, you don’t get AIDS from wearing a dress, and, number two, Perry Ellis never touched your dress, he designed it,” Banks recalled. “That is what led me to writing the book about Perry.”
Perry Ellis: An American Original was published in 2013. The memoir is Banks’s seventh book. He also coauthored Tartan: Romancing the Plaid (2007), American Fashion Menswear (2009), Preppy: Cultivating Ivy Style (2011), Patricia Underwood: The Way You Wear Your Hat (2015), and Norell: Master of American Style” (2018).
With the memoir, Banks hopes people will see how interested he has always been in all phases of fashion. “I love women’s wear, men’s wear, home…I love the history of fashion and been a lover of history since I was a child,” he said.
