Covers the history of couture and its top designers.

THE WORLD OF FASHION IS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Are you ready to design? Color Me Couture turns the last one hundred years of high fashion into your own personal design studio. Learn about the cuts, patterns and fabrics of the world’s finest couture dresses and gowns from the most famous fashion designers...and then entirely reinvent them on your own. On one page of each spread in the book, you’ll find an elegantly finished garment inspired by fashion’s greatest icons, complete with its season, style and design notes. On the opposite page, it’s your turn to shine. Take inspiration from the original work and craft your own gorgeous couture design, complete with color and accessories. By the time you finish this book, you’ll be a fashion expert and a couture designer.

This lavishly illustrated book features essays from 29 of the world's top designers, who talk about fashion in the first decade of the 21st century, with its emphasis on craftsmanship and traditional techniques, and pay loving homage to the iconic couturiers of the past, expressing how their creativity and attention to detail has forever shaped fashion's future. The book features personal essays on couture by today's most lauded contemporary designers, such as Giorgio Armani and Oscar de la Renta, plus the fresh faces who design for the top design houses: Marios Schwab, Jason Wu, and Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli for Valentino. Each designer describes their view of couture and the inspirations drawn from iconic figures such as Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, Coco Chanel, Madeleine Vionnet, Madame Grès and Paul Poiret. Essays are complemented by photographs and fashion illustrations, plus an intimate portrait of the designer by photographer Rankin, world renowned for capturing the wit and personality of his subjects. Couture in the 21st Century beautifully captures the divine and sublime of couture fashion in the hands of the world's best-known designers."Couture in the 21st Century is an inspiring opportunity to delve into the archives of the likes of Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and Coco Chanel."

Late legendary couturiers of modern fashion speaking eloquently about life, design, and inspiration. Vionnet, Chanel, Dior, Saint Laurent, McQueen—these names define haute couture, and long after the designers have passed away, their influence on fashion continues to be profound. In an exceptional compilation of the original words of these couturiers, Couture Confessions provides a unique and in-depth look at the lives and work of these fashion icons. In this engaging, beautifully designed book, Pamela Golbin, acclaimed chief curator of twentieth-century fashion and textiles at Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, has ingeniously constructed conversations in the designers’ own words that highlight their compelling personal stories as well as essential fashion "moments"—from designers Paul Poiret, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Madame Grès, Alexander McQueen, Madeleine Vionnet, and Gabrielle Chanel to Elsa Schiaparelli, Yves Saint Laurent, Jeanne Lanvin, Pierre Balmain, and Christian Dior.Featuring striking illustrations by internationally recognized illustrator Yann Legendre, each "interview" asks the questions every fashion lover has always wanted to ask, making these legends approachable, human, and ever more inspiring.

A comprehensive history of high fashion in Paris from Madame Grès and Balenciaga to Yves Saint Laurent and Yohji Yamamoto, spanning all aspects from clothing and accessories to perfume. Ever since Charles Frederick Worth dressed the Empress Eugénie in the 1860s, launching a "golden century" for dressmaking, Parisian haute couture has been a source of endless admiration and fascination. Its emphasis on exquisite design and meticulous craftsmanship propelled it to the forefront of the fashion industry. The position and practices of haute couture may have evolved over time, but the work of many contemporary couturiers reveals a strong sense of continuity, from the creations of Jeanne Lanvin and Christian Dior, through to their modern counterparts in Jean-Paul Gaultier or Viktor & Rolf. This chronological study traces the history of the esteemed couture houses of Paris, examining the role of the designer and the extraordinary craftsmanship behind the finished creations, the place of haute couture in Parisian culture, and its influence in the wider fashion industry. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between haute couture and the client, as well as the dualities in modern haute couture—its sense of exclusivity and quasi-mythical aura countered by an ever-increasing reach into popular consciousness and attainability. This volume is richly illustrated with images of the most superb pieces created by exceptional designers. Various incarnations of Chanel’s timeless quilted handbag, Fath’s charmingly patterned silk scarves, and Poiret’s elegant perfume bottles demonstrate that haute couture encompasses far more than just clothing.

The hundred years of fashion from the 1860s to the 1970s was a time when a succession of haute couture designers-most notably, Charles Worth, Paul Poiret, Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent-were the arbiters of fashion, and their creations the weapon of choice for power-seeking members of the aristocracy and upper class. Fashioning Society explores the ways in which high-fashion designers and their maisons influenced-and were influenced by-the fine arts as well as sociological, technological, philosophical, and political developments. By addressing the question, "What has happened to high-fashion design?" the author discusses what readers should consider when trying to understand and predict long-term trends. Instructors, contact your Sales Representative for access to Instructor's Materials.

Current fashion is a complex phenomenon. In a constant state of constant flux, contemporary fashion combines a mix of the different cultural aspects that inform the modern individual. Atlas of Fashion Designers is born out of this proposition, and features a compilation of the most important fashion designers and their work in the past five years, selected from a multi-disciplinary perspective that display the heterogeneous mix of today’s fashion world. Featured designers all have one trait in common: they were singled out, not only for the quality of their work, but also because they illustrate different perspectives in their approach to fashion. This book includes designers with a wide array of visions, from classical haute couture to those who experiment with developing fields such as anthropology, new textiles, high technology, architecture, art, or recycling. From Ricardo Tiscci, Nicholas Ghesquière to Sybilla, to artists who are primarily concerned with pure fashion such as Lucy Orta, or to those investigators who concern themselves with innovation in the fields of textile research and technology, such as Issey Miyake or Hussein Chalayan. Atlas of Fashion Designers is a very relevant and useful reference in a hybrid society, which is composed of ever increasing heterogeneous elements. By offering a synthetic, fluid and diverse approach to the subject, the “Atlas� draws a map of the complex world of fashion at present time, and looks forward to what it may be tomorrow.

How design collaboration, networks, and narratives contributed to the establishment of a recognized English couture industry in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1930s and 1940s, English fashion houses, spurred by economic and wartime crises, put London on the map as a major fashion city. In this book, Michelle Jones examines the creation of a London-based couture industry during these years, exploring how designer collaboration and the construction of specific networks and narratives supported and shaped the English fashion economy. Haute couture—the practice of creative made-to-measure womenswear—was widely regarded as inherently French. Jones shows how an English version emerged during a period of economic turbulence, when a group of designers banded together in a collective effort to shift power within the international fashion system. Jones considers the establishment of this form of English design practice, analyzing the commercial, social, and political factors that shaped the professional identity of the London couturiers. She focuses on collaborative activity that supported this form of elite, craft-based fashion production—from the prewar efforts of the Fashion Group of Great Britain to the wartime establishment of the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers, modeled loosely after French fashion’s governing body, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. It was these collective efforts by couturiers that established and sustained London’s place as an internationally recognized center for creative fashion.

Avant-garde designs from "America's First Couturier" British-American designer Charles James (1906-78), "America's First Couturier," is famed for the extraordinarily elegant evening gowns he created in the 1930s through the 1950s for society ladies on both sides of the Atlantic. From the beginning of his career, James also designed revolutionary unisex styles. The famous eiderdown evening jacket, designed in 1937 for women, was revived as a cult unisex design object in 1970s New York. The eiderdown jacket and James' other unisex designs share with his ball gowns a sculptural, architectural presence and a rigorously cerebral design process grounded in science and mathematics. James is regarded as a visionary thinker in the world of fashion, introducing lasting innovations in both technique and methodology. Charles James: The Couture Secrets of Shapegoes beyond the evening gowns, focusing on some of James' unisex designs and his life in the artist community at the Chelsea Hotel, where he lived from 1964 until his death in 1978. He remained restlessly creative in this period, his rooms at the Chelsea serving as a studio, workshop, and archive. In 1973 he wrote The Charles James Approach to Structural Design; this allowed a glimpse into his thinking at that time and is included in this publication in facsimile. Edited by Homer Layne, James' last assistant, and Professor Dorothea Mink, with a preface by fashion designer Rick Owens, this volume reveals a new facet of James' groundbreaking body of work.

From Charles Frederick Worth to Nicolas Ghesquière, designers have propelled fashion from an elite craft into a cornerstone of contemporary popular culture. This brilliantly written analysis of the achievements of the 50 greatest names in international fashion explores their lives, both personal and professional, drawing on the latest academic research and on the best of fashion journalism, including the authors' own interviews with designers spanning a 30-year period.The designers' working methods and career highlights are outlined in detailed and wittily written entries that capture the spirit of their times. From Poiret and Patou to Gernreich and Galliano, the sometimes provocative selection of 50 names poses stimulating questions about the definition of a fashion designer in the modern era. A ground-breaking book, this is a definitive introduction to fashion designers that is essential reading for both students and general readers alike.