Unzipped: Chronicles of a Fashion Fit Model
GENRE
MEMOIR
Core Theme
ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, LOVE
TIME PERIOD
1980s & '90s
COMPARABLE TITLES
WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (1993), DANGEROUS INTENTIONS (1995)
CHARACTER LIST
DARLENE PARRIS YOUNG. 20S-30S-40S-50S. LEAD. FASHION FIT MODEL. SHY COUNTRY GIRL WITH NO SELF-ESTEEM BECOMES A WOMAN WHO STANDS UP FOR HER THOUGHTS AND BELIEFS.
DICK. 20’S. DARLENE FIRST HUSBAND. FATHER OF HER TWO CHILDREN. AUTHORITARIAN AND ABUSIVE.
ANGELO. 30S. DARLENE’S SECOND HUSBAND. ITALIAN. NEWS CAMERAMAN. ADORABLE.
ZORBA. 40S. DARLENE’S THIRD HUSBAND. GREEK. PATTERNMAKER. FREELOADER.
TOM. FASHION BUYER. THE PERSON WHO SEXUALLY ASSAULTED DARLENE.
DANNY. DARLENE’S LITTLE BROTHER. PARALYZED AT AGE OF 15 IN A BIKE ACCIDENT.
Logline
During the apex of New York City’s Garment District, while the crime families battle for business, a fashion fit model, enduring trauma and abuse, reaches the pinnacle of her profession while struggling in her search for love and happiness.
Target Audiences
Age: 18-34,35-54,55+
Target Gender: Female Leaning
Setting
New York City
Based on a True Story
Yes
Publishing Details
Status: Yes: self-published
Publisher: Amazon KDP
Year Published: 2020
Starting Description
I was pressing his pants when I noticed the milk stain. How in god’s name did he spill milk on the front of his pants when he doesn’t even like milk, I wondered. My neurotic husband couldn’t even be persuaded to eat vanilla ice cream, much less anything else that was white. Nonetheless...
Ending Description
And I still take the train into the city every now and then to fit a garment when my agent calls. I guess those calls will keep on coming, just as long as I don’t gain or lose an inch—and keep my ass padded for good measure—just in case I land on it yet again!
Group Specific
Information not completed
Hard Copy Available
No
ISBN
9781734798005
Mature Audience Themes
Sexual Abuse
Plot - Other Elements
Other
Plot - Premise
Internal Journey/Rebirth,Rags to Riches,Overcoming Monster/Villain
Main Character Details
Name: Darlene Parris Young
Age: 40
Gender: Female
Role: Protagonist
Key Traits: Aspiring,Adventurous,Uneducated,Confident,Complex,Patriotic,Decisive,Selfless,Empathetic,Outspoken,Visionary,Honorable,Strong Moral Code,Naive,Unapologetic
Additional Character Details
Name: Darlene Parris Young
Age: 45
Gender: Female
Role: Protagonist
Key Traits: Adventurous,Aspiring,Charming,Confident,Patriotic,Decisive,Selfless,Empathetic,Outspoken,Visionary,Heroic,Honorable,Strong Moral Code,Leader,Naive
Additional Character Details
The author has not yet written this
Additional Character Details
The author has not yet written this
Genre
ROMANCE, MATURE AUDIENCE, DRAMA
Brief
A waitress from a small town in New Hampshire, who survived domestic violence and trauma in her own family, reaches the top of a fashion fit model career in New York. While trying to find love and happiness, she battles to raise a family, facing harassment in the workplace, physical and emotional abuse in her relationships, lies, and even a brutal attack. Dismissed by the institutions that were supposed to give her support, she learns to find redemption and a renewed life.
Overall Rating
GOOD
Narrative Elements
Authors Writing Style: FAIR
Characterization: GOOD
Commerciality: EXCELLENT
Franchise Potential: FAIR
Pace: GOOD
Premise: EXCELLENT
Structure: GOOD
Theme: EXCELLENT
Accuracy of Book Profile
Character details should be expanded, and the summary should be improved.
Draw of Story
Darlene's journey is a touching, relevant story that reaches out to every woman who faces (or knows someone who has faced) sexual vulnerability in the workplace, and struggles with abuse from their partners and its long term effects. My attention was hooked as her life story revealed the attacks on a person doing her best to live as a valuable human being and feeling split throughout her life, being so confident at work and unable to speak in her marriages.
Possible Drawbacks
There are some parts that run a bit slow due to extra details about fashion, fabrics, or Italian cuisine, in order to demonstrate how much she learned living through all of that even without finishing high school. There is also some unnecessary information to the narrative, including the chapter that mentions the 9/11 events just for the sake of mentioning them, which sounds disjointed with her story at that point. At last, too many characters with no relevance can sometimes make it hard to follow (for instance, Deborah, a fellow waitress who helps her to find a better job and gave her Valium early on in the book, eventually is called Barbara).
Use of Special Effects
THE STORY DOES NOT RELY ON SPECIAL EFFECTS
Primary Hook of Story
It’s a narrative based on a true story of someone turning darkness into light. Despite the story being set up in the 70s and 80s, the subjects of abusive relationships and sexual vulnerability in the workplace still hold a great deal of relevance today, exposing insidious contradictions and a distorted morality in a post-war society.
Fanbase Potential
This is not a story for fanbases, but narratives about hope, acceptance, forgiveness, and redemption usually finds a large audience. The story allows people to identify with it, to bear witness to underdogs and victims who triumph in the face of adversities.
Awards Potential
Some of the most popular movies of all time feature themes of redemption, forgiveness, and second chances. There’s a great potential to get noticed in the awards, especially with a narrative based on a true story.
Envisioned Budget
LOW BUDGET
Similar Films/TV Series
WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT (1993), DANGEROUS INTENTIONS (1995)
What’s New About the Story
This is a story centered on an industry and an era rarely explored by films or TV shows. She openly speaks about events that take place behind the scenes and manage to deal with big egos.
Lead Characters
She speaks rawly about the effects of abuses on her life and never faulted her values or her dignity. It’s also interesting to see how she faces conflicts when making new choices and setting boundaries, always trying to please her loved ones, which led her to a split life, being so confident in her work and incapable of speaking in her marriages.
Uniqueness of Story
Other than the fact that it centers on an industry and a time period unusually featured in films or TV shows, there's not much rare in this story. We can find similar approaches in other productions about abuse relationships and domestic violence. However, it covers a lifetime (her job as a fit model from her 20s to her 60s) and this can be attractive to the audience.
Possible Formats
Film: Studio, Indie, Streaming TV Series: Limited Run / Mini-Series
Analyst Recommendation
RECOMMEND
Justification
This is a compelling story about hope, acceptance, forgiveness, and redemption that usually finds an audience who can identify with it, to bear witness to underdogs and victims who triumph in the face of adversities. It's a classic drama that makes the audience go through so many emotions, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying.
Brief
A waitress from a small town in New Hampshire, who survived domestic violence and trauma in her own family, reaches the top of a fashion fit model career in New York. While trying to find love and happiness, she battles to raise a family, facing harassment in the workplace, physical and emotional abuse in her relationships, lies, theft and even a brutal attack. Dismissed by the institutions that were supposed to give her support, she learns to find redemption and a renewed life.
What We Liked
This is a story about hope, acceptance, forgiveness, and redemption that usually finds an audience who can identify with it, to bear witness to underdogs and victims who triumph in the face of adversities. In turning darkness into light, Darlene's journey is a touching, relevant story that reaches out to every woman who faces (or knows someone who has faced) sexual vulnerability in the workplace, and struggles with abuse from their partners and its long term effects.
Film: This is a compelling story about hope, acceptance, forgiveness, and redemption that usually finds an audience who can identify with it. This classic drama makes the audience go through so many emotions, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying. Because it covers a lifetime, from her 20s to her 60s, the narrative structure allows to work on flashbacks or fast-forwards.
TV: Darlene's story can be told in two captivating ways at the same time: behind the scenes in the fashion industry and in her private life. While she grows in popularity, gains confidence and independence through her work as a fit model, she is also struggling with domestic violence and abusive relationships, dismissed by the institutions that were supposed to give her support (the police and the church). From a dysfunctional family, she strives to find love, happiness and stability, and got married four times. Over several episodes in a mini-serie, she would naturally be dealing with the many characters she has encountered in her life.
Key points:
1. True story
2. A victim who triumph
3. A woman overcoming incredible hardship and mistakes on her way to success
4. Relevant subjects
5. Low budget
Synopsis
It’s 1969. Darlene Parris Young, a 20-year-old girl from a small town called Tilton, in New Hampshire, works hard to raise two children, Michael and Shelley, and to keep the marriage together with her husband, Dick, a lineman just a few years older than her. She faces an abusive relationship, but she can’t get out of it - she saw her mother struggling with the same situation, and also the Cosmo magazine always shows that she can do better as a spouse. While Dick works in two jobs, she decides to add to their income working as a waitress.
While facing harassment at her workplaces from abusive and powerful clients, she meets George Resnick, a kind and gentle fashion photographer who encourages her to become a model. He introduces her to Gloria Nash, the owner of Gloria Nash Agency in Boston. Darlene starts being successful in her new job. Meanwhile, her marriage crumbles, her violent husband cheats on her, and she decides to divorce him.
Darlene meets Angelo, an adorable italian that works as a news cameraman. She moves with him and her two kids to New Jersey and lives happily for a few years. In the end, he decides to have a child, but she can't agree to it or she may lose her model job, which she loves. Therefore, she chooses to go through a second divorce.
Darlene meets Zorba, a greek pattern maker that works with her. Attracted by his charm, she finds herself in a new abusive relationship raising her two children, along with two step children. Blossoming from a shy country girl who does not have a high school diploma and rarely smiles to New York's “Coat Hanger with the Mouth”, Darlene has now a successful career. Yet, at the end of the day, when she goes home, she faces her husband taking away the confidence she was gaining in her work.
In order to escape from that situation, she meets Tom, a fashion buyer who wants to show her an apartment to sell to her. It turns out to be a trap, and he rapes her. After facing the brutal attack, she is dismissed by the institution supposed to provide support -the police. The situation gets worse with Zorba and she goes to her third divorce.
After years of abusive relationships and seeing your children grow up, she decides to take time for herself. She buys a cottage by the sea, starts working less and enjoying life more. Then she meets Edward, an investment businessman with whom she marries in her 60s. Still carrying life’s bruises all the while, she turns dead ends into hope and, finally, she realizes that forgiving her father's attitude towards her mother, after a life traumatized by war, would change her own perception of life and relationships.