Roland Mouret’s fashion memoir sells to Quercus

Quercus has acquired French fashion designer Roland Mouret’s memoir, I AM ROLAND MOURET: THE BUTCHER’S BOY WHO DRESSED THE WORLD.

Jane Sturrock acquired world all-language rights when in post from Juliet Mushens. Kate Hewson, non-fiction publisher at Qerucus, will manage the publication, which is scheduled for October 2026.

The blurb reads: Roland Mouret’s influence on the fashion world – from The Dress, to the fashion front-lines of Paris, London and New York, to mentoring Victoria Beckham – cannot be ignored. But though you know his work, you don’t know his story. Born the son of a butcher in a rural village in the Pyrenees, his first encounter with fabric and form aged seven was folding his butcher’s apron to avoid the blood. He found his way into fashion through modelling, a short stint at fashion school and photoshoot styling, against a backdrop of glamour, clubbing, sex and all that being a gay man in the 1990s in Paris and London entailed.

But he found his true passion the moment he started to drape fabric over a mannequin – just as he had with his apron decades earlier. Mouret’s clothes were something new, stemming from a wonder at and respect for the female form. Others were making clothes by the rules, and finding the women who fit those rules too. But Mouret looked at the woman first, and created clothes that gave her power – something that came naturally to a person who had had to fight his way to find his place in the world. After a career creating the clothing that lets people tell their fashion stories, he’s ready to tell his own.

Roland said, “I am known as a fashion designer, but this is not a book about fashion. It is my intimate account of my life; my journey from the butcher’s shop of my father in the Pyrenees to the man I am today who has learned that elegance is refusal. This book is the seam that joins the past and the present.”

Hewson said, “Roland’s memoir has all of the incredible stories and glamour you’d expect, coupled with the joy of a truly unexpected and gripping life story, told with humanity, vibrancy and wit. It is a love letter to fashion, to people and to staying true to yourself.”