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All dressed up with nowhere to go

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Fashionably Late by Olivia Goldsmith HarperCollins $278 THIS book is everything that Naomi Campbell's recent foray into publishing is not. Like Swan, the clothes business is the focus, but unlike Campbell's superficial fashion statement, Olivia Goldsmith's story of designer Karen Kahn, her company and her personal search for a place to call home, provides not only an in-depth appraisal of the world of haute couture but a scathing indictment of the way men control women through the clothing industry, rounded off by a refreshing anti-family stance for the back-to-basics 90s.

Best of all, Goldsmith has dressed it up as a blockbuster and sewn it together with great humour. It can thus soft-shoe shuffle its way into the hearts and minds of fans of Danielle Steel and co, while kicking home a pertinent message about women's lives.

Plain, middle-aged but talented Karen Kahn appears to have it all: a handsome husband who loves her, a career that is about to make her one of the most feted designers in the world and two wonderful homes. She can't have a baby but she's going to adopt.

Despite this seemingly idyllic set-up, she has doubts. As an adopted child herself, Karen has always felt an outsider at home and like many women, despite her achievements, she still has little confidence that she alone is responsible for her worldly success and nobody else.

She also has her ex-model friend Defina's warning: that unlike many men, a woman can never have a marriage, home, career and children. Only two.

Sure enough, trouble rolls in at home and at work, forcing Karen to examine her goals and reassess the meaning of success and her relationships.

That friendships eventually prevail over family and everyday women over the 'glamour' of high fashion neatly avoids the usual road to a happy ending (fiction-style), while providing an alternative route to satisfaction: being true to yourself.

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