Esme Young

Narrating her own memoir is a bold move, but Esme Young pulls it off with the kind of charisma that makes you feel like you’re camped out in her studio, tea in hand, listening to war stories between machine whirs. Her voice is warm and unpretentious—when she laughs about the time she turned a bedsheet into a ballgown for a royal event, you’ll laugh right along with her. The pacing is brisk, almost breathless at times, mirroring the frantic energy of running a fashion label on fumes. Yet in the quiet moments, when she discusses losing everything, the weight of her words lands like a needle through fabric: precise and piercing. That said, the audiobook’s brevity works against it in spots. Some pivotal career pivots feel rushed, glossing over decades of work in a single phrase. And while Young’s narration brims with personality, a little more polish in the production—subtle ambient cues like the clacking of a sewing machine—could’ve elevated it from charming to immersive. Still, if you crave authenticity over artifice, this is a front-row seat to fashion’s grittiest, most inspiring underdog tale. I finished it in one sitting, my notebook filled with scribbled ideas for my next DIY project.