Bal Harbour

P H OTO © T H E R E S A R U DZ K I ( WA LTO N ) ; A R T W O R K © J E N N Y WA LTO N ; C O U R T E S Y O F T H E M O N AC E L L I P R E S S "Jenny Sais Quoi: Adventures in Vintage & Personal Style" by Jenny Walton It's often said that real style can't be taught. Jenny Walton, whose elegant, artfully-off-kilter looks have helped her earn nearly 400,000 Instagram followers, and many thousands of Substack subscribers, has a different point of view. "Style is just like any skill," she says. "It takes a lot of time, of looking at things, trying things on, seeing what works." With her debut book, "Jenny Sais Quoi: Adventures in Vintage & Personal Style," out from Monacelli Press in April, she hopes to inspire readers to "get off of their phone," she says, "and into stores, and start discovering themselves and what they really like." Walton, a graduate of the Fashion Design program at Parsons, started her career at Calypso St. Barth as an assistant designer. On her commutes to work from her Brooklyn apartment, she'd hunch over a notebook, drawing the outfits in her head. "It was 2014, and Instagram was starting to take off," she says. "I would spend the length of the G train sketching, and then post it when I got off. And it was amazing, because you could immediately get feedback." The posts helped spur a career shift into fashion illustration, starting with a big spread for InStyle magazine. But it was her creative wardrobe, plucked from vintage shops in New York and posted online, that really propelled her into the spotlight. A few years ago, she began writing regularly for Vogue about vintage shopping. Her lavishly illustrated book—part visual diary, part artist's portfolio, part style coach manual— leads readers to find inspiration, as she does, in the world around them. "I think so much of what we see now is fed to us, but unique style or just a point of view can be found in random places," she says. "It might be going to a record store, picking up an album and think, She looks cool, and just go down that rabbit hole." The book follows along as Walton, chasing romance, moves from New York to Milan. Her overseas love affair doesn't last long, and soon she's on her own, building a new life as an expat. There are treatises on "color paletting," on getting "off the algorithm," on the many ways "mistakes make style"; and digressions on her beloved dogs, Charlie, a beagle, and Aurora, a wire-haired dachshund, along with a whole section on "Peggy the Pigeon," as she dubbed the JW Anderson designed pigeon purse she carried down the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival. "Everywhere I went with it, people were losing their minds," she says. "It's such a fun act to be at a security line and they ask for your ID and you open up the wing of a pigeon." As she was finishing up the book last year, Walton found love again, seated in the next seat on a flight. Now, newly engaged, she's leaving Italy for southern California, embracing a new sun-drenched landscape for style inspiration. helped spur a career shift into fashion illustration, The book romance, overseas she's on her There are getting "off "mistakes beloved dogs, wire-haired section on the JW Anderson carried down Festival. "Everywhere losing their to be at a and you open As she Walton found on a flight. Italy for southern sun-drenched Jenny Walton's debut book was designed to get readers off their phones and into a world of lavish style; at right, one of her whimsical sketches; below, the artist at work on a painting. This spring, three new books spotlight the creative output of three extraordinary women across the fields of design, fashion, and entertaining. BY JAY CHESHES women wonder BALHAR B O U RSH O P S .CO M

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