An Innocent Fashion

Starred review from May 15, 2016
Hernandez portrays the scope of dreams, love, and the fashion industry in this literary debut. Even before he spies escape in the pages of top fashion magazine Regine, Elian San Jamar knows, intrinsically and at a young age, that he does not belong with his working-class parents in ugly Corpus Christi, Texas. Against familial and geographical odds, he adamantly forges his own path through childhood, ascending to new heights when he earns a full scholarship to Yale, changes his name to Ethan St. James, and bonds with Madeline Dupre, a blue-blooded doll with privilege to share. The pair are soon befriended by Dorian Belgraves, the son of a famous model, forming a complex trio. His friends' enthusiasm encourages Ethan to follow his calling, seeking out and cultivating beauty--and when he earns an internship at Regine after graduation, it seems that all his dreams are coming true. But of course anyone who's read a fashion-industry roman a clef knows how twisted this road will inevitably become. Work at Regine is grueling and soulless, not remotely what Ethan expected when he styled himself in its image as a young adult. As an industry, fashion turns out to be quite fascist (hysterically so, at times), and it feeds ravenously on Ethan's innocence. Madeline and Dorian are hardly helpful in this regard. Exiting the enchanted, equalizing field of Yale, they can continue to romp where their hearts desire while Ethan has to pay rent. And how to make a living in a disconnected, capitalist world is something for which neither his passion nor his Ivy League education has prepared him. Writing in a fervently literary style that flirts openly with the traditions of Salinger, Plath, and Fitzgerald, Hernandez is a diamond-sharp satirist and a bracingly fresh chronicler of the heartbreak of trying to grow up. Honest and absurd, funny and tragic, wild and lovely, this novel describes modern coming-of-age with poetic precision.

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June 1, 2016
All Elian San Jamar wants in life is to live surrounded by beauty, so he feels out of place growing up in a working-class family in Texas. When he begins college at Yale on a full-ride scholarship, he remakes himself as Ethan St. James and discovers the wild, extravagant life he's always wanted with his wealthy friend, Madelyn, skiing in Switzerland, attending the opera, shopping at Bergdorf Goodman. When Madelyn begins dating a famous model's son, the brooding, handsome Dorian, Ethan falls in love, and it's and it's a love triangle. After graduation, the real world kicks in. Dorian disappears, leaving them bereft, and though Ethan secures an internship at an elite fashion magazine, Regine, he finds that beauty is hard to find. Hernandez's debut ambitiously combines the socialites of The Great Gatsby, an Oscar Wildean sexual fluidity, and cutthroat fashionistas reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada (2003). The postcollege blues and challenges of becoming, as Ethan puts it, a shriveled compromise, an adult, are vivid and relatable to many millennials.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)