Our coffee table is quivering under the weight of all the books we put there to look arty and sophisticated.
But rarely do we sit on our sofa with a glass of cava, and think, ‘let’s spend this evening flicking through Gombrich’s History of Art, or studying this A-Z of info graphics. Instead we use these books as coasters and turn on the TV. But one book we’ll be poring over, rather than pouring over, is Cally Blackman’s 100 Years of Fashion.
This beautiful tome deserves to be read, and by ‘read’ we mean ‘ogled’ as there are more large, lavish images than text. It starts with high society in the 1900s – a mix of illustrations, advertisements and portrait photos and goes through couturière to Garbo in the 30s, Dior’s New Look, air-raid-shelter chic, Teddy Girls, Flower Power, Hip Hop and ends, of course, with Lady Gaga.
We’ve read a lot of fashion books in our time, but we like this one as it’s full of pictures we’ve never seen before (including one of an Austrian pianist in 1912 wearing four Arctic foxes as a stole) and fantastic quotes from fashion icons. We’d buy it for the above Andy Warhol gem alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment