Gypset Style by Julia Chaplin

by Julia Chaplin

We've had our yuppies, yippies, jet setters, bright young things, generation X & Y—get ready for the artists, surfers, designers & bon vivants who live & work around the globe in such places as Jose Ignacio, Uruguay & Ibiza, Spain. Explore the unconventional wanderlust lives of these high-low cultural nomads.

Genres: Fashion, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published March 30, 2009

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hippies with more money than God going off the grid in the way that only the fabulously wealthy could ever afford. This book also has a section on how the Roma and traveling people were heavily persecuted and how people used slurs to describe them . . . and somehow missed the fact that they also consider gypsy a slur, and you have that in the damn title!!!!! The privilege oozes from every page.

[Lauren Chase · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. As other reviewers mentioned, this book is about very privileged people living the "Bohemian" lifestyle. I took this out of the library looking for visual inspiration. Unfortunately most of the photos in this book - even the contemporary ones - are poor quality. Overall this book fell flat and was neither inspirational nor aspirational.

[Edie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2024 Note: Past Edie was unaware that a word used in the title of this book and throughout this review is a racial/ethnic slur. I am leaving it as a record of past Edie's mistakes.

My library has a wonderful feature - it lets me track the books I've checked out. I knew a book was missing from my goodreads list but couldn't remember which. And when I went to see if the library list would jog my memory I saw that I had also forgotten to review Gypset Style. Except that I do remember writing the review so it must have been a technical glitch. Or I just forgot to hit save.

I thought that Julia Chaplin's book would be a bunch of aspirational photos. But it turns out there was a lot of writing too. So it took me longer to read than I was expecting. She combines the idea of gypsies and jetsetters to describe a certain type of person/lifestyle that combines travel and taste and lifestyle. I'm on board with the idea of the book but the execution left me wanting more. The writing wasn't as organized as I would have liked and the photos were interesting but not as inspirational as I was expecting. This might be because I was expecting a lifestyle guide and instead Gypset Style is more of a memoir. Although I think it is trying to be a lifestyle guide. The term gypset is brilliant but the book didn't live up to its central idea. That said, I enjoyed the book. Just not as much as I wanted to.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this better than I did. Sadly, I borrowed it with a strong suspicion that I was going to be annoyed, and I was. Part of it was the desperate need for more proofreading. I liked the author's writing style, but it was peppered with egregious errors, including a sentence about "botched cultural references" that then went on to make--wait for it--a botched cultural reference. I enjoyed the photos, and I especially enjoyed the chapter on the historical antecedents of the so-called Gypset.

Which brings me to another reason I think I found this annoying: the coined term Gypset. Would I like to live an unconventional life full of art, interesting people, and exotic destinations? Sure! But I'm not so sure I would want to be called a Gypsetter. I understand that the premise of the book demanded a catch-all term to tie it together, something snappier than "photos and some text about interesting and, in some cases, eccentric people living in beautiful places, with a surfing theme tying it all together"...but still.

[Haylee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Combines two of my favorite things- fashion and travel.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An oldie but a goodie. Guests love flipping through it when they come over.

[lucy black · Rating 1 out of 5]

yawn...the beautiful people, the beautiful people....