Retail provides an early outlet for his devilish fire. An after-school job at Jordan Marsh — “my favorite departments were better dresses, furs and handbags” — gave teenage Bill an opportunity to study fashion design and construction. When Bonwit Teller opens in Boston, Bill describes the process in detail, including the anti-Semitic missteps of the marketing campaign. Bill dives into the fray, making himself indispensable. In 1948, he walks away from a Harvard scholarship in order to join Bonwit’s training program in New York City, such is the ferocity of that devilish fire.

Bill’s quirky, unpretentious voice guides the reader through the postwar period of Manhattan glamour. Having got the measure of retail, he starts a millinery business using the name William J. (The omission of the last name was an attempt to minimize the cringings of his conventional family.) Designing, fabricating and selling hats instantly consumes his waking hours, with one major exception: fancy-pants costume parties. During this period, Bill concocts surreal and demented costumes for himself and his friends, involving, among other items, excitable chickens and a life-size papier-mâché elephant. Other than some accidental nudity and some unscheduled encounters with the cops, it’s all good, clean high-society fun. There is a notable absence of anything louche or hedonistic in this entire book.

In the late ’50s, women stop caring about hats and start ratting their hair into domes and beehives. Even though Bill saw this coming, he went into denial: “I put my hatted head in the proverbial ostrich hole.” The demise of hats leads to a career in fashion reporting, where his atrocious spelling and “plain-Jane” sentences raise a few eyebrows. The narrative grinds to a halt with the ascent of André Courrèges and the arrival of the white gogo boot. The book concludes with two rip-roaringly opinionated essays: “On Society” and “On Taste.”

Certain leitmotifs emerge to form the pillars of Bill’s eccentric personality. At the top of the list we have his self-imposed deprivations. In the early years, he allows himself a fur-collared trench, flamboyant shirts and ties, and Ollie, “a large black beatnik French poodle.” Over time these frou-frous fall away and his knees start to show through his worn pants. “I have the strongest desire to escape to the discomforts of the poor,” he declares, and he means it. Austerity becomes his drug of choice. He appears to make a contract with himself: I will remain in this world of glamour but only as a sack-cloth-and-ashes observer who lives on a diet of Ovaltine and leftover hors d’oeuvres, and stays in crummy Parisian hotels while others dine at the Ritz. His rationale? Independence. “Money’s the cheapest thing; freedom is the most expensive” was one of Bill’s favorite axioms.