Recommendations : Books About Fashion & Designers

[Chanelcouture09]

Chloe: Six Decades of Style

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications (15 Oct 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0847838528
ISBN-13: 978-0847838523

This handsome volume chronicles the rise of the fashion house Chloé, a crucible of creativity for some of fashion’s most notable designers. The fashion brand Chloé may be sixty years old, but she still exudes a youthful elegance and femininity. As the first high-end Paris fashion house to sell exclusively ready-to-wear clothing, Chloé has since redefined its look for the modern woman with flattering colors, quality materials, and a series of must-have It bags. Chloé started in 1952 when Gaby Aghion invented the revolutionary idea of luxury prêt-à-porter, taking the craftsmanship of haute couture and making it available to a wider audience. Her focus on the beautiful yet wearable gave the line currency with chic young women. Born in Egypt in 1921 and moving to Paris when she was in her twenties, Aghion dressed some of the most fashionable and powerful women of her day, including Jackie O, Grace Kelly, and Brigitte Bardot. Her vision has always been maintained through the company’s extensive career. The company’s lively and fresh energy has been sustained through the decades partly because it seeks out new talent, including then-28-year-old designer Karl Lagerfeld, who started with the company in 1966. The book explores his career at Chloé, along with Martine Sitbon (in 1988), Stella McCartney, who joined Chloé when she was 26 (in 1997), and Phoebe Philo, who was responsible for Chloé’s major reinvention from 2001 to 2006, where she is credited for bringing a sensual and personal touch to the line. It is currently helmed by Clare Waight Keller, who previously reinvigorated the fashion line Pringle of Scotland. Chloé, in short, is the modern woman—refined and redefined.

Diana Vreeland Memos: The Vogue Years: Correspondence from the Vogue Years

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications (15 Oct 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0847840743
ISBN-13: 978-0847840748

A look behind the scenes at Diana Vreeland’s Vogue, showing the legendary editor in chief in her own inimitable words. When Diana Vreeland became editor in chief of Vogue in 1963, she initiated a transformation, shaping the magazine into the dominant U.S. fashion publication. Vreeland’s Vogue was as entertaining and innovative as it was serious about fashion, art, travel, beauty, and culture. Vreeland rarely held meetings and communicated with her staff and photographers through memos dictated from her office or Park Avenue apartment. This extraordinary compilation of more than 250 pieces of Vreeland’s personal correspondence—most published here for the first time—includes letters to Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, Norman Parkinson, Veruschka, and Cristobal Balenciaga and memos that show the direction of some of Vogue’s most legendary stories. These display Vreeland’s irreverence and her characteristically over-the-top pronouncements and reveal her sharpness about the Vogue woman and what the magazine should be. Photographs from the magazine illustrate the memos, showing her imagination, prescience, and exactitude. Each chapter is introduced by commentary from Vogue editors who worked with her, giving readers a truly inside look at how Diana Vreeland directed the course of the magazine and fashion world.

*Amazon.co.uk

 

[Chanelcouture09]

Working Progress by Nick Waplington (Out 1st September 2013)

In 2008 Alexander McQueen commissioned photographer Nick Waplington to document the creation of his Fall 2009 collection--all the way from inception to runway showing. Unfortunately, it was to be the last Fall/Winter collection that McQueen would stage before his untimely death. This show, which he titled The Horn of Plenty, found McQueen revisiting his 15-year archive of work and recycling it into a new collection. In effect, it was his personal survey of his work to date. The set was composed of broken mirrors and a giant trash heap made up of all the sets from his previous shows; critics have commented that this reflected McQueen's feelings towards the fashion system and how it pressures designers to be creative geniuses while relegating each collection to the garbage bin of history as soon as it's sold. Waplington was given unprecedented access to McQueen and his staff, which included the current Creative Director of the brand, Sarah Burton. Every step of the creative process is documented in fascinating detail and readers receive a rare insight into the inner workings of McQueen's creative process. Most notably, McQueen himself placed the book's layout, picture by picture, on storyboards. The book was ready for publication when McQueen died, then was put on hold--until now. This substantial overview, with more than 120 photographs, is published just as McQueen edited it, commemorating the most personal of his collections. It includes an essay by Susannah Frankel, Fashion Editor at Grazia (U.K.). Lee Alexander McQueen (1969-2010), CBE, was one of the most important fashion designers of the last two decades. He was the recipient of four British Designer of the Year awards, as well as the CFDA's International Designer of the Year award, 2003. In 2011, following his death, the Costume Institute in New York organized an enormously successful retrospective of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Artist and photographer Nick Waplington (born 1970) has published several monographs including Living Room and The Wedding (Aperture), Safety in Numbers (Booth Clibborn) and Truth of Consequence (Phaidon). He lives in London and New York.

*Amazon.co.uk

 

[testinofan]

Hans Feurer - Hans Feurer 2013



Hans Feurer has been a mainstay of fashion photography since the late 1960s, but despite his influence, this legendary photographer has had no books dedicated to his work--until now. Feurer's career has certainly been an illustrious, star-studded and influential one, and the models who were his subjects, the designers he profiled and the leading publications which featured his work comprise a roll call of the highest echelons of the fashion and magazine worlds. Feurer has shot for Vogue, Nova, Elle and many more leading publications. One of his most famous advertising campaigns was for Kenzo in 1983, which immortalized Iman and secured her status as an iconic supermodel of the period. Before embarking on a career in photography, Feurer worked as a graphic designer and art director. Traces of these previous careers are detectable throughout his work, evidenced by his careful compositions and precise styling. Emmanuelle Alt, the editor of French Vogue, has revived Feurer's photographic career, and he is now widely referenced by top photographers such as Inez & Vinoodh. Designed by Fabien Baron, and lavishly illustrated with 175 photographs, this overview is a must-have for collectors of fashion photography books. It presents the photographer's most iconic images from throughout the years, in a fascinating mélange of fashion styles and trends.Hans Feurer was born in Switzerland in 1939. After studying art in Switzerland, he worked as a graphic designer, illustrator and artistic director in London. In 1966, he traveled to Africa, during which trip he decided to become a photographer. He returned to London and began to compile a portfolio.
200 pag publish by Damiani

amazon.com

 

[MissMagAddict]

Lee Miller in Fashion – October 8, 2013 by Becky E. Conekin

Lee Miller: Light on Her Fashion by Cathy Horyn

“I’d rather take a picture than be one,” Lee Miller remarked to a New York newspaperman in October 1932, as she stepped off a ship from Europe and was recognized among the “cargo of celebrities on board.”

Miller, then 25 and determined to embark on a photographic career, already had two careers behind her: as a fashion model (one of the first to make a name for herself) and as the muse and lover of Man Ray. Wearing a neat beret and a fur-trimmed coat, she must also have stood out on the pier for her beauty and a world-weariness beginning to show in her expression. The remark may have been casually tossed off, but Miller was taking charge of her life. As a woman, as one of the most perceptive photographers of the 20th century, she enthralled because she made her own choices.

She also packed a serious amount of work into a relatively short professional career, as Becky E. Conekin’s new book, “Lee Miller in Fashion” (The Monacelli Press), reminded me. She opened her New York studio in 1932, in a space on East 48th Street, and by the early ’50s, had ceased taking pictures to spend time in the English countryside with her family, and do what she really liked, which was cook.

In New York, she made a startlingly innovative image for a cosmetics company using three separate negatives, a mirror and fresh gardenias framing the objects. When advertising slowed because of the Depression, she did portraits for Vogue. Then she returned to Europe and began a remarkable run that included war-time fashion work for British Vogue and, of course, her enduring images, as a war correspondent, of the liberation of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, and the devastation of Western Europe.

Miller has been the subject of a number of books and exhibition catalogs, and the muse for at least one fashion show (a 2007 Gucci collection by Frida Giannini). But Ms. Conekin’s very engaging, nicely researched book is the first devoted to Miller’s fashion work. Ms. Conekin, a fashion historian and theorist, teaches European history at Yale. She has an amused eye for fashion characters, then and now, and with the help of Miller’s son, Antony Penrose, who runs the Lee Miller Archives in England, she makes it clear why her subject was an undaunted original.

Miller did all kinds of fashion work for British Vogue, including regular columns like “Bargain of the Month,” and there are many with direct allusions to World War II — a 1942 photo of a model in tweeds peering into sacks marked “tins” and “rags” for salvage drives. During the Blitz, she photographed women wearing fires masks and eye shields — they are almost surreal. As Ms. Conekin suggested, it was Miller’s way of quietly bringing the war into the pages Vogue, and perhaps an artist’s eye to fashion.

There is also a sense that Miller identifies with the circumstances of many women — wanting to look smart but dealing with war work. I’ve always loved her images taken after the liberation of Paris; she shows women celebrating at the house of Paquin, and trying on the latest millinery. So much is conveyed beyond fashion. It’s about a return to life.

She also did some amazing candid images of models during the first couture shows after the liberation, which Edna Woolman Chase, the editor in chief of American Vogue, criticized in a telegram as “snapshot fashion reportage,” and added that the mannequins looked “especially cheap.”

Miller replied to her editor that “Edna should be told that maybe there is a war on …”

source | nytimes.com

 

[BestJAYEver]

Is the "Vogue On" series any good?

 

[Thefrenchy]

The Business of Fashion Books

BY ROBIN MELLERY-PRATT 28 OCTOBER, 2013
Over the last decade, the once humble fashion book has been sexed up, styled and placed front and centre on shop floors from to Boston to Beijing. To what end? BoF investigates.

NEW YORK, United States — No longer dusty tomes on Elizabethan ruffles, empire line dresses and gallant pantaloons, fashion books have left costume history behind and become fashionable. Weighty monographs, beautiful biographies, costly compilations of salacious advertising and celebutante style guides have been filling fast-growing fashion sections of bookshops across the globe.

Retailing on average between $150 and $500, with limited editions like Taschen’s tome on Valentino Garavani’s life and work priced in the thousands of dollars, fashion books have become highly desirable branded objects in and of themselves. But is the proliferation of fashion books seen over recent years a response to genuine market demand, or is there more to the story?

“I remember the year well, 2004, when Rizzoli published the big tome on Tom Ford,” recalled Jennifer Pierson, vice president and commercial director of leading publishing house Rizzoli. “The book trade reaction was like, ‘Wow we have not seen a book this big in terms of trim size, pages and corresponding price.’ [There was] a certain degree of sceptisim: ‘The book is fantastic, but how will the consumer react?’ And the consumer reaction was very strong and here we are ten years later and it’s still in print. I think that is something that we hadn’t seen prior to 2004, at least not in the same volume as we see today.”

“To me Tom Ford became a wonderful vehicle for looking at what happened with the whole business of fashion books and how consumers were reacting to both fashion and its recreation in print,” Pierson continued.

But how significant was that consumer reaction in real terms?

“I think it has changed enormously, but I still think it is still a very niche vein; you know Dan Brown sells a lot more books that the most successful fashion book will sell,” said Charles Miers, the publisher of Rizzoli.

“Publishers always said that fashion books, per se, would always have a limited audience. So few books in the fashion world are likely to be a best seller,” agreed Valerie Steele, fashion historian, curator, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the author of over 15 books on fashion. “I think that despite the incredible rise in interest in fashion as a kind of spectator sport, with everybody watching the shows live on the Internet and so on, I think that the audience for buying fashion books is still relatively limited.”

So in the absence of significant consumer demand, what is behind the rampant proliferation of fashion titles? Why do many of the largest book stores in the world stock more fashion titles than product design, architecture and interior design books combined?

“I would assume that most of the books that are published by individual brands are fundamentally vanity projects where the publisher is paid by the brand for a certain number of copies,” said Steele.

Part of the funding for increased print runs does, indeed, come from the desire of brands and individual designers to create permanent records of their work. “I realised after I left Gucci, that I needed to own what I had done, so the first thing I did was a Tom Ford book. I did it within 4 to 5 months of leaving. I thought, ‘I’m very proud of what I’ve done and I’m going to claim it, and I’m going to put it all in a big thick book and label it Tom Ford,’” the celebrated designer told BoF’s Imran Amed back in July.

The gravitas and permanence of a book are no doubt compelling to designers, whose work is by nature ephemeral. But the promotional benefits are equally attractive. “I was very aware that I needed to promote my name, and so I was conscious of that from the very beginning,” Ford continued. “[The book] gave me the ability for magazine stories; gave me the ability to go do signings at Bergdorfs, Neimans. It was a link to keep my name alive.”

Naturally, the power of a designer name like Tom Ford can be lucrative for publishers. “We benefit very much from having one of the world’s great designers in Tom Ford or Ralph Lauren or Thomas Maier,” said Miers. “And they definitely benefit from the tangible record that a book gives them.”

But there’s more to the story.

Fashion brands, of course, have significant retail presences of their own. But by agreeing to share distribution with publishers, they are able to not only utilise a publisher’s knowledge of book markets around the world; they can also place a powerful representations of their brands, in the form of these books, in important international markets, at comparatively low cost. What began in 2004 with Ford’s desire to take ownership of his work and “promote [his] name,” has over the past decade, become a widely adopted global marketing device.

“In initial meetings, almost without exception, there is a kind of open information sharing [between Rizzoli and the brand],” said Pierson. “Where is it really important for you to be? Why don’t you list for us the places of importance, from one to ten, countries, cities, stores and we will layer that on top of our expertise. Then we have an interesting conversation about how we are able to take advantage of marketing that they are doing with the release lets say of the new collection, all that sort of thing where we match up their marketing plans with our marketing plans.”

“It is incredibly important to the fashion houses that their books are in those markets where they are targeting specific nationalities, or where they already have a strong presence from a retail point of view. Thankfully, those parts of the world that are important to the fashion houses, in terms of nationalities which are spending money, mirrors nicely with the market for illustrated books.”

Indeed, fashion books play an important role in helping brands to educate consumers in fast-emerging global markets like China, said Miers: “The books bring a certain sense of history and the brands are very conscious of the importance of educating the customer about their histories. China is a priority we are always looking to expand. We are very active in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea — all very good book buyers. But China is a priority.”

Over time, the shifting purpose of fashion books, from permanent records to marketing tools aimed at developing customers in new markets, has altered the nature of the books themselves.

“The fashion houses see the book as a way to communicate with their ‘Audience’ with a capital ‘A,’ so that is people who are avid followers of the brand, read the magazines, appreciate what the designer is doing and might not be able to afford the clothing,” said Pierson. “This is why two things are of the utmost importance to the fashion industry: number one, making something that is really consistent, representative and celebratory of their brand and, number two, wanting it to be fairly ‘accessible’ to a broader audience, from students to professionals — so wanting to make [the books] available to people who are not necessarily spending thousands of dollars on clothing each year, but who appreciate fashion.”

“The [high fashion] consumer, of course, also [reacts] to well published, well curated fashion books with a strong point of view and made in collaboration with the creative directors of fashion houses, in the same way that they might respond to couture or ready-to-wear from those same houses,” she continued.

Steele added: “[The books] are now marketed as kind of luxury items, almost like buying an accessory. $350 for a Taschen book is a lot of money, but it’s a lot less than a pair of designer shoes.”

But the phenomenon is not universally lauded. Amanda Renshaw, the editorial director of international publishing house Phaidon, told BoF: “I would very much like to do monographs on individual designers, as we do in art and architecture or graphic or product design, but we have refrained from doing it because I have found that the companies that own the designers want to have too much influence and the books become vanity publishing frankly. What Phaidon is trying to do is take an area that can be quite complex and complicated and take the reader by the hand and help them navigate their way through this world that is fashion.”

Phaidon continues to have success with more informative tomes, such as The Fashion Book and, more recently, The Anatomy of Fashion. But even a cursory glance in the fashion sections of most bookstores confirms its brand and designer monographs that dominate the genre.

“I would say the vast majority of our fashion books are very personal creations with creative talents in a house,” said Pierson. Steele added: “It’s much harder for people to publish an individual book that has no exhibition associated with it; no brand backing it and buying it for its stores as sort of a big luxury object.”

Indeed, the fashion book as an object d’art is typically far more important than the information contained within (and has resisted the broader shift, in fiction and non-fiction alike, towards digital, tablet-friendly “e-books”).

“You are dealing with people that by definition are really interested in beautifully made three-dimensional objects, whether that is a piece of furniture, a painting, a dress or a bag. That is what they are interested in — and the book is part of that,” said Miers.

Pierson put it more simply: “An ex-boss of mine used to have a note outside his room, saying ‘If you don’t think you can judge a book by its cover, you have not worked in publishing.’ People respond to the packaging.”

There are, after all, infinitely more people in the world that desire to own a little piece of aspirational design, than those who wish to learn about it.

source: businessoffashion.com

 

[Thefrenchy]

Dries van Noten

Publication Date: 26 Feb 2014
ISBN-10: 9401414742
ISBN-13: 978-9401414746
Edition: 1

Dries Van Noten is an icon of Antwerp Fashion. Being part of the Antwerp 6, he became prominent in the international fashion world by the end of the eighties. Described by the NY Times as "one of fashion's most cerebral designers", he won the International Award of the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2008. This volume shows the range and diversity of his collections to date, revealing his sources of inspiration, using a range of creative mediums (paintings, fashion, photography, music, personal photographs) to illustrate this and really get inside the mind of the fashion designer, from concept to construction. Contents: I. Itinerary. How it all started. From studying at the academy until his first shows; 2. Vocabulary. This section shows Dries Van Noten's inspirations in combination with his work; 3. Universe. Timeline with a complete overview of the collections; Lifestyle containing Van Noten's house and gardens.

- AMAZON.CO.UK

 

[Chanelcouture09]

ultimate clothing company
photographs by alasdair mclellan
-
edited and designed by m/m (paris)
text by jo-ann furniss
—
limited edition of 2000 copies individually numbered,
105 color and 25 black & white plates
—
156 pages with dust-jacket poster 50x65cm
and plastic protective sleeve

By viewing this work, we can see obvious influences (candid and sexually charged imagery of Bruce Weber or melancholy of Steven Patrick Morrissey) but the British photographer Alasdair McLellan imposes his personal style by describing what is being young and living in the North of England through an alternation of intimate portraits of young boys and landscapes revealing a "middle class" environment, both bathed in an unique warm light. Ultimate Clothing Company is both an intimate and introspective monograph edited and designed by the artistic directors Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag = M / M (Paris) in a limited and numbered edition of 2000 copy with a high quality print, all gathered under a poster-wrap dust jacket.

*mmparis.com

 

[Thefrenchy]

^Bought it this morning, lovely book.

 

[Chanelcouture09]

Ten Years in the Bag : Selfridges 2003-2013

Ten Years in the Bag celebrates a decade behind the scenes and in front of the windows at Selfridges: ten years of collaborations and innovations during the first ten years of ownership by the Weston family. Named the best department store in the world in 2010 and 2012, the London flagship store is famed for its lavish and distinctive window displays and for its influential daring in the sphere of retail. Selfridges’ Creative Director Alannah Weston approached Violette Editions exclusively to produce this book in the summer of 2013. Edited by Hettie Judah and designed by Veronica Ditting, this book contains over 600 images of Selfridges most fabled and famous recent events and installations, alongside accounts from collaborators, designers, retailers, long-standing employees and clients. With contributions from Bruce Weber, Katie Grand, Mark Hix, Bay Garnett and Charlotte Tilbury, amongst others, this is the most comprehensive book to date on the award-winning department store.

*Selfridges.co.uk

 

[Chanelcouture09]

Lanvin: I Love You by Alber Elbaz

Hardcover: 260 pages
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications (30 Sep 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0847844218
ISBN-13: 978-0847844210

An important monograph on the complete work thus far of Alber Elbaz for Lanvin—one of fashion’s most transformative designers working today, who employs mise-en-scènes as a principal way of staging his work. Under the helm of present design director Alber Elbaz, Lanvin is now one of the powerhouses of Paris fashion, and his respectful nod to the origins and founding aesthetic of Lanvin is tempered by an unrivaled, transformative energy that has created a new, youthful audience for the house. One of the pillars of Elbaz’s work, apart from staging dynamic runway presentations, is a unique way of presenting his designs in the windows of their flagship stores, most notably in the boutique on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. These mise-en-scènes, which change every month, are well regarded as elaborate spectacles unique even in fashion. Seducing passersby into his very distinctive brand of street theater and occasionally employing prominent artists of the day, Elbaz’s windows are above all about the clothes, and his designs are given pride of place in a variety of elegant and often playful episodes. The book showcases the fashion and spirit of Lanvin with nearly two hundred compositions, from those shown at their boutiques to one-offs at the Crillon, and as far afield as Art Basel in Miami, as well as unpublished renderings of concepts hand-drawn by Elbaz

*Amazon.co.uk

 

[Chanelcouture09]

Vogue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute: Parties, Exhibitions, People

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (1 Oct 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1419714244
ISBN-13: 978-1419714245

The Metropolitan Museum's annual Costume Institute exhibition is the most prestigious event of its kind--a remarkable, must-see spectacle. With subjects that both reflect the zeitgeist and contribute to its creation, each exhibition--from 2005's "Chanel," to 2011's "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty"--creates a provocative and engaging narrative drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors. The show's opening-night gala, produced in collaboration with Vogue magazine, is regularly referred to as the Party of the Year and draws a glamorous A-list crowd. Untitled Met/Vogue begins its exploration of the event in 1971 and spans four decades, bringing us to the present. The book will offer a level of elevated, insider access only Vogue is capable of providing. Through photographs from the exhibitions themselves, as well as the fashion shoots they inspired in the pages of the magazine, catalogues, invitations and party photos from the opening-night galas, every chapter will offer a visually arresting, in-depth survey of that year's theme. Drawing from extensive Vogue archives, the fashion shoots featured will be anchored by photographs from icons such as Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino and Craig McDean, while also showcasing the editorial vision of legendary Vogue editors like Grace Coddington and Tonne Goodman and the immense knowledge and wit of writers such as Hamish Bowles and Jonathan Van Meter.

*Amazon.co.uk

 

[Chanelcouture09]

A list of books set to be published this year -

Yves Saint Laurent by Roxanne Lowit & Pierre Bergé (27th October 2014)
Vogue: The Gown by Conde Nast Publications (14th October 2014)
Haute Couture Ateliers: The Artisans of Fashion (29th September 2014)
Elsa Schiaparelli's Private Album by Marisa Berenson (9th June 2014)

 

[Chanelcouture09]

*Waterstones.co.uk

A unique insight into one of the most creative and romantic fashion designers working today, exploring the process and imagination that drive his lavish work. When the Roman designer Giambattista Valli launched his own line in Paris in 2005, few would have anticipated the influence he would ultimately wield on contemporary design. Lauded as the heir to the giants of twentieth-century Italian fashion, Valli and his designs herald a return to romance and an elegant femininity, melding a sense of fantasy with lean, modern lines. Impeccably tailored, meticulously detailed, and luxuriously crafted, his collections are crucial passages in contemporary fashion history, attended by everyone from royalty to A-list Hollywood celebrities.The book offers a window into the work of an artist at the height of his creative powers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of one of the most unique fashion designers working today, with images of his design process and backstage views of runway shows that allow readers to accompany the designer on his creative journey. The volume includes booklets with details of Valli s lushly complex fabrics and clothing.

 

[Chanelcouture09]

Louis Vuitton Fashion Photography

Publication Date: 14 Oct 2014

A landmark fashion photography monograph chronicling the most famous and sought-after brand in the world. Since the 1920s, the images of Louis Vuitton—both advertising and editorial—have drawn the world into its ethereal, luxurious identity and have changed the way we see fashion, travel, art, and culture. These captivating touchstones of fashion photography have served as a glamorous, romantic porthole to one of the world’s most prestigious luxury brands. Louis Vuitton Fashion Photography is an unprecedented visual history of the company, seen through its presence in photographs. This exceptional album features over two hundred images by the most important modern and contemporary photographers, including David Bailey, Henry Clarke, Patrick Demarchelier, Karl Lagerfeld, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, David Sims, Bert Stern, Juergen Teller, Mario Testino, and Bruce Weber. This book features images from iconic Vuitton advertising campaigns from the ’20s through to the present, with magazine editorials from publications including Vogue, L’Officiel, Numéro, V, Harper’s Bazaar, Interview, W, Egoïste, Love, and Pop. This elegantly designed mix creates a unique and exciting expression of the brand and its interpretation by top stylists and fashion editors. Chronicling the style, history, and exquisite fashion through lavish, evocative photography, this volume is an absolute essential for lovers of fashion, art, and photography.

*Amazon.co.uk

 

[thercbray]

any book done by the Met is great!! I have, and recommend, Balenciaga by Pierre Arizzoli-Clémentel (ISBN: 978-0500970287). Also, there is a really huge book called Fashion: 150 Years of Couturiers, Designers, Labels. It's a great overview of different eras, designers, styles, and icons. I wish it was more encyclopedic, but anymore and the book would require a two people to lift, lol.

 

[Chanelcouture09]

I Just Arrived in Paris

Publication Date: 27 Oct 2014

ISBN: 978-3869308234

On 5 March 2014, Juergen Teller photographed the eagerly anticipated first collection by Nicolas Ghesquière as the new artistic director of Louis Vuitton. In his inimitable style, Teller visualizes the designers ambitious manifesto for the luxury house: Louis Vuitton is a land of contrasts. A time-honored and noble legacy is kept alive by a yearning for discovery and exploration. Coursing boldly and imaginatively through the decades, Louis Vuitton refreshes the world of fashion with an untiring ebb and flow of retrospective and fresh perspective This initial collection tells a tale of expertise made possible by innovative techniques. It focuses on the highlights and remains open to interpretation. Living proof that todays timeless was at one time seen as innovative. In this collection, the timeless is now. This book is a collaboration between two of the most influential vanguards working in contemporary fashion. Tellers candid, unadorned aesthetic perfectly complements the restrained luxury of Ghesquières fashion, marking the beginning of a new chapter in the rich history of Louis Vuitton.

*amazon.co.uk

 

[Chanelcouture09]

Yves Saint Laurent by Roxanne Lowit

Publication Date: 27 Oct 2014

Hardcover: 208 pages

ISBN-13: 978-0500517604

Yves Saint Laurent is a name synonymous with style, elegance and high fashion. When he came on the scene at Dior and then started his own line, he quickly changed the way people regarded haute couture and the world of fashion itself. He revolutionized womens eveningwear when he introduced le smoking, a womans tuxedo. He had a huge impact not only on fashion, but also on many peoples lives, including that of photographer Roxanne Lowit. Yves Saint Laurent is Lowits personal photographic history of Saint Laurent, the man and the fashion, from 1978, the year she first met him, to the last show he gave in 2002. With contributions from YSLs muses and admirers, including Catherine Deneuve, Lucie de la Falaise, Betty Catroux, Jacqueline de Ribes, André Leon Talley and Valerie Steele, this book represents the backstage experience at YSLs shows as Lowit experienced them. Whether surrounded by beautiful models or peeking at the catwalk from the wings, every moment was a magnificent photo opportunity. Lowit shares with the world magical moments of YSL intimate, social, absorbed in fashion and creates a unique portrait of this towering figure of postwar couture. This book will be coveted by Yves Saint Laurents many fans worldwide and by anyone interested in the very best of high fashion.

*Amazon.co.uk

 

[Chanelcouture09]

Ann Demeulemeester
Written by Ann Demeulemeester, Introduction by Patti Smith

Pub Date: October 28, 2014

The first and highly personal perspective into the work and processes of Ann Demeulemeester, one of the most influential and inspiring fashion designers of our time. Graduating from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1981, Ann Demeulemeester (and her contemporaries in the Antwerp Six) transformed global fashion with an aggressive restatement of traditional fashion design and a polemical approach to luxury trends. Influenced by punk, she founded her label in 1985 and imbues her designs with a strong narrative and rebellious spirit. For Demeulemeester, fashion is a form of communication. Her complex language of contrasts covers a whole gamut of emotions. The tension is highly poetic, and her clothes reveal many layers of soul. Known for her elegant tailoring and dark yet glamorous aesthetic, she created a serene and darkly romantic world with an intriguing mix of edgy rebellion and sophistication. This book is a tribute to Demeulemeester’s historical career, with over 1,000 photographs approximating some of the mystery and detailing associated with her brand.

*Rizzoliusa.com

 

[Chanelcouture09]

Olivier Zahm: A Photographic Diary of Fashion, Art, and Sex

Paperback: 600 pages
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications (1 Oct 2014)

The man behind Purple magazine is the chronicler of his generation, exposing the lifestyles of the creative elite through his intimate, autobiographical photographs.

*Amazon.co.uk