While finding his way as a fashion designer in the late aughts, Prabal Gurung (Prabal Gurung) kept a vision board that read in part, "Start a brand. Get in a few stores.... Dress Oprah. Michelle Obama. Gloria Steinem... Go to the Met Gala.... Start a foundation." Gurung managed all this and more, and he tells his story with élan and a wide-open heart in Walk Like a Girl.
Gurung was born in Singapore in the 1970s (he doesn't share his birth year) and raised in Nepal. He flouted traditional gender norms from the outset--he played with paper dolls, preferred Wonder Woman to Superman--and was bullied accordingly. The sketches he drew of clothing "allowed [him] to dream and escape," but he was directionless after he finished college until a family friend who saw his drawings suggested that he give fashion a whirl. At Delhi's National Institute of Fashion Technology, Gurung "found [his] people," and in 1999, he began at Parsons School of Design in New York, where he gradually realized his vision board dreams.
Gurung's story traces not a graceful arc but a zigzagging line reflecting career highs ("Mom, Demi Moore and Oprah like my dresses!") and lows. Through it all, Gurung never loses sight of his mission: like Edward Enninful's A Visible Man, Walk Like a Girl chronicles a fashion-world insider's efforts to diversify a white industry and promote inclusiveness. Gurung writes that he has used the runway as his "megaphone"; now he's using this charming memoir. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer