Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are the most successful design partnership in fashion history.
Since they burst on to the scene in Milan in the eighties, their multi-million-dollar women's line, menswear, underwear, shoes jewellery and swimwear empire has become one of the dominating forces in Italian – and world – fashion. Every year, the opulent and dramatic presentations, in ever-more spectacular locations, of their successful 21st-century haute couture line Alta Moda are rapturously received by the fashion press.
Their hot-blooded, theatrical style is inspired by the Sicily of Visconti's 1963 film The Leopard, by Catholic imagery and by the Italian screen sirens like Sophia Loren and Monica Bellucci who wear the designs captured here by Vogue’s stable of photographers: curvaceous dresses, spectacularly colourful coats, Swarovski-crystal-embroidered corsets, tulle ball-gowns hand painted with beautiful floral images, baroque brocades and lashings of leopard-print.
The Dolce and Gabbana woman – characterised, according to Vogue, as having ‘a life that reaches beyond, complete with fantasy, turmoil and always a story’– is sensual but proper: actress Isabella Rosselini describes ‘The first piece of theirs I wore was a white shirt, very chaste, but cut to make my breasts look as if they were bursting out of it,’ while Madonna, more prosaically, simply says: ‘I like their designs because they make clothes for a womanly body.’
Fashion’s leading shoemaker, Manolo Blahnik is one of the handful of designers whose name is synonymous with their product.
His success has lasted from setting up as a shoe designer in a Chelsea boutique in the 1970s to the present day, with American Vogue’s Anna Wintour declaring ‘The truth is, I wear no other shoes except his’.
Blahnik has collaborated with many leading fashion designers – from Ossie Clark at the start of his career and John Galliano at Dior at its height – but Blahnik’s greatest achievement is to have made footwear, previously subservient to the overall concept of a look, the most important of all accessories.
His many covers and features in the pages of Vogue reveal that wearing a pair of ‘Manolos’ is to be utterly transformed; in Blahnik’s dreamy, handmade creations, a woman can reinvent her personality. She is a Lolita in his Mary-Janes and a red carpet diva in his satin mules. Or as Madonna once put it, with characteristic bluntness: ‘His shoes are wonderful, and they last longer than sex.’
This book reveals how Calvin Klein created a fashion brand that made understated, all-American glamour his own – at the same time as building a vast billion-dollar empire that includes everything from pants and jeans to perfume and pillows.
A master of minimalism, Klein’s clothes have been beautifully documented in the pages of Vogue over the years by the world’s starriest photographers, including Terry Donovan, Herb Ritts, Snowdon and Nick Knight. While Vogue also reflected the public’s fascination with his film-star handsomeness, glamorous marriage and divorces, bi-sexuality, drama and stints in rehab, the magazine understood that Calvin Klein’s success lay in the very opposite of excess: ‘His clothes simply offered women practical elegance and cool, understated chic’.
In the early 1970s, he introduced his trademark jeans, which he elevated to designer status by cutting them tight and branding his name on the back pocket. Suggestive ads (with the nubile, 15-year-old Brooke Shields cooing ‘You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.’) created a designer jean frenzy among consumers. In 1993, he also made sexy male underwear mainstream with an equally seductive campaign featuring the beefcake charms of the young Mark Wahlberg.
This is the ultimate handbook to an American icon.
'I like looking at things from a different angle and questioning what is expected.' – Jean Paul Gaultier
This book tracks the stellar career of maverick designer Jean Paul Gaultier from his first show in Paris in 1976, when he challenged the current ideals of beauty and promoted a style of fashion which embraced ethnic diversity and models of all shapes and sizes.
Seen as an enfant terrible when he first burst on to the fashion scene, his titillating, provocative designs embrace corset dresses, conical bustiers, biker jackets paired with ballet tutus and skirts for men, along with classic fashion staples such as beautifully cut smoking jackets and trench coats. By the turn of this century he had put Madonna in corsets for her Blonde Ambition tour, dressed celebrities for the red carpet and moved seamlessly between mainstream popular culture (co-hosting the outré British TV show Eurotrash and designing award-winning film costumes for Luc Besson and Pedro Almodovar) while also launching his own seriously successful haute couture label – an addition to a burgeoning empire of ready-to-wear, perfume and kidswear.
With stunning images captured in the pages of Vogue by photographers like Mario Testino and Lord Snowdon, Vogue on: Jean Paul Gaultier shows how his avant-garde fashion creations and cutting-edge designs revealed Gaultier’s unerring instinct for how women want to dress.
'Valentissimo! Viva Valentino!' exclaimed Vogue, lauding the achievements of the first Italian dress designer to take on the Paris fashion world and achieve haute couture status.
Drawing on Vogue's archive of imagery and text, as well as the author's exclusive interview with the designer, this book analyses Valentino's exceptional fusion of Latinate sensuality and Parisian precision. It shows how his inventive colour sense and use of opulent fabrics derived from Italian classical painting, and how his trust in and promotion of Italy's craftsmen and women is evident in his use of featherweight materials, handmade embroidery, beading and pleating.
Valentino's early love of costumes worn by stars of the Italian and American film industry influenced his designs, and he attracted a superstar clientele, including Hollywood celebrities from Elizabeth Taylor to Gwyneth Paltrow, European royalty, and society figures such as Jaqueline Kennedy - who wore him in mourning, and in remarriage, at her wedding to Aristotle Onassis.
Valentino is unique: the exquisite quality of his dressmaking and the femininity, glamour and allure of his seasonal collections are matchless; exceptionally in his field, he is known by his first name only; and he holds a record as the founder of a house who remained in creative control of it for 45 years.
A tortured genius and one of most influential designers of the twentieth century, Yves Saint Laurent was responsible for revolutionising the way women dressed and viewed themselves.
During a wildly creative career stretching from 1958 to 2002 Saint Laurent established a reputation for accessible, flawlessly cut clothes. He became an overnight sensation in 1958, aged 21, when he showed his 'Trapeze' collection, his first for the House of Christian Dior, following the master's death.
Four years later, Saint Laurent opened his own couture house and within a few seasons was hailed by Vogue's Diana Vreeland as 'the pied piper of fashion'. Viewed as a master colourist and admired for his choice of sultry fabrics, his great gift was creating lasting styles - described by Vogue as 'stockpiles of essentials in times of famine' - that flattered all shapes and sizes. As well as designing wardrobe classics like the 'Le Smoking' tuxedo for women, the Safari jacket, the trench and the pea coat, and introducing trousers into haute couture, he also dressed international style icons such as Catherine Deneuve, Marella Agnelli and Lauren Bacall.
With his nose for the zeitgeist, Saint Laurent recognised the global power of street fashion and launched Rive Gauche, his ready-to-wear boutique line in 1966. Christened 'The Saint' by Vogue, every element of his fashion empire, which included exhilarating couture collections, exquisite accessories and sought-after perfumes, was captured by Vogue's writers and leading photographers like Richard Avedon, David Bailey and Norman Parkinson.
Gianni Versace created a fashion house that, as British Vogue declared, defined late twentieth-century glamour, invented the supermodel and sanctioned in the public consciousness a supremely self-assured feminine sexuality.'
His debut line in 1978 was instantly successful; in the Eighties, his extravagant designs and his vision of powerful women defined the era, and culminated in the Nineties with the supermodel phenomenon - his designs worn by those glamazons who featured on every Vogue cover.
Vogue on: Gianni Versace explores how his childhood spent in his mother's dressmaker's shops, his Italian hometown of Reggio Calabria, and his family, particularly his younger sister, Donatella, influenced not only the designer he became - the insistent sensuality, vivid colours, classical motifs, clashing prints and daring cuts - but also the way he constructed his business: family first.
The book reveals how the more brazen elements of his design - the jewelled embroidery, the bondage straps, the safety-pin gowns - were predicated on supremely skilled tailoring, deft use of materials and innovative techniques.
Alongside are Vogue's eye-witness accounts of the Versace lifestyle - the palazzos and parties, the art, the celebrity friends. Vogue on: Gianni Versace is a celebration of a designer and a house that, in only 19 years, came to dominate the catwalk and the red carpet.
Armani's style is elegance and sensual simplicity incarnate. 'Few names in fashion conjure so distinctive a look,' said British Vogue.
For Armani, design has always been about an easy, timeless grace, not constantly changing trends; clothes meant to compliment the body, not merely cover it. With his careful removal of extraneous internal structure, emphasis on the human form and the use of soft textiles and a muted colour palette, Armani changed the face of fashion from haute couture to the high street. He revolutionised the way both men and women looked and dressed, taking away formality and fuss as surely as he ripped out linings and interlinings.
With his principles of style, simplicity and practicality, Armani deconstructed the fashion world. From inauspicious beginnings as a department store window-dresser, he funded his first company by selling his car. 40 years on, he oversees a multi-billion dollar empire with over 250 stores in 33 countries worldwide.
One of the first designers to truly utilise the appeal of Hollywood, his seminal wardrobe for Richard Gere in the 1980 film American Gigolo helped cement his as the look of the late 20th century. His frequent collaborations with luminaries such as Martin Scorsese, Leonardo Di Caprio, Cate Blanchett and Lady Gaga have all contributed to making the shy, reserved but dedicated Armani the first superstar designer of the modern age. Vogue on: Giorgio Armani charts the rise of a small town boy to a fashion monolith.
The handsome, aristocratic Hubert de Givenchy blended the hallowed traditions of haute couture with a modern sensibility. For 40 years he focused always on purity of line, but combined an artist's eye with a keen entrepreneurial mind.
His innovative 1952 debut collection made its mark by presenting separates, then a little-known approach to fashion. Givenchy created the most unrepentantly glamorous of evening dresses, developed the influential 'chemise' dress without a waistline, and fielded debonair little daytime suits which have never gone out of fashion. He is also credited with pioneering the princess silhouette, and his name became forever linked with the Sabrina neckline after dressing Hepburn in the eponymous film.
Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades. Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.
Ralph Lauren's designs vividly embody the American Dream and he has risen to become his country's foremost fashion designer. His visionary ability has created a multi-billion-dollar brand, still very successful almost 50 years on.
His genius lies in his innate skill for interpreting key cultural elements of Americana - whether Folk Art, or the world of polo-playing Hamptons' socialites, or Navajo motifs - and encapsulating them in appealing garments. Also a natural fit with Hollywood, he designed costumes for film classics such as The Great Gatsby and Annie Hall. Celebrated in Vogue by leading photographers such as Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weberand Mario Testino, Lauren's clothes have appeared on countless covers, on everyone from Cher to a young Gwyneth Paltrow.
From his ubiquitous Polo Ralph Lauren shirts with their much-imitated equestrian logo to his American country-club take on upperclass Englishness, his skill in making aspiration accessible is second to none.
Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades. Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.
In 1936, Cristobal Balenciaga opened a fashion house in Paris, after fleeing the Spanish civil war; within a couple of seasons he had raised fashion to the level of art.
Christian Dior called Balenciaga 'the master of us all', while Coco Chanel claimed that he alone was 'a couturier in the truest sense of the word... the others are simply fashion designers'.
In the Fifties he revolutionised women's silhouette, experimenting with the semi-fitted shape, the sack dress, the cocoon and the babydoll. His innovative designs were famously easy to wear, with one diplomat's wife quipping that she could play golf in her Balenciaga gown. In the Sixties, despite the waning power of couture, he created some of his most imaginative clothes, culminating in the bold, fluid lines of his last two collections. Always something of an enigma, he preferred to let his clothes speak for themselves.
Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades. Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.
A provocateur, radical thinker and instigator of the most important sartorial statements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Vivienne Westwood is a fearless nonconformist with a relentless passion for tradition.
From the mini crini, the liberty corset and the rocking-horse shoe to the stunning, sumptuous wedding dress worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City and Dita Von Teese's infamous purple wedding dress, Westwood has unleashed her imagination on the world for almost 40 years. Her Pirate and Edwardian looks were worldwide fashion trends, and her revolutionary designs include the co-creation of the punk style, the introduction of street style into high fashion, the reworking of the crinoline, the restyling of Harris tweed and the reintroduction of platforms and the hourglass figure.
She has been described by Anna Wintour as 'an unbelievable influence' and by Alexander McQueen as 'the Coco Chanel of our day'.
Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades. Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.
Alexander (Lee) McQueen was - for the 15 years that he stood at its helm - British fashion's most significant figure.
His extraordinary career, which took him from humble beginnings as an apprentice on Savile Row to the creative directorship of his own global brand, is a story of hard work, ambition and visionary brilliance. Leading photographers such as Mario Testino and Corinne Day photographed his stunning designs for Vogue, and through them Alexander McQueen's career is presented - from the controversy of his early shows to the elegiac perfection of his last - with a particular emphasis on the evolution of his signature style: immaculate tailoring, slashed fabric, historical references and beauty in the macabre.
The book shows that McQueen's own ambition was fully realised: 'I want to be the purveyor of a certain silhouette or a way of cutting so that, when I'm dead and gone, people will know that the Twenty-first Century was started by Alexander McQueen'.
Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades. Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.
In 1947, Christian Dior stunned the fashion world with his first collection; his 'New Look' featured designs that transformed the way women dressed.
Dior continued to send shockwaves with his later shows, significantly altering the fashion landscape during the ten years of his career as a couturier. This book recounts Dior's search for the perfect line and how his unique vision of women's ideal silhouette developed. More than any designer before him, Dior embraced the dual aspects of creativity and commerce, becoming the first couturier to license his products in 1949.
He became one of the most famous designers of the twentieth century, and his name still fronts one of the most successful haute couture fashion houses. As portrayed in the pages of Vogue by photographers such as Horst and Irving Penn and artists like Christian Berard, the book offers a unique insight into Dior's contribution to design, his dramatic impact on the landscape of 40s and 50s fashion and his personal legacy.
Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades. Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.
Hailed as 'the most influential female designer of the twentieth century', Coco Chanel pioneered classic easy-to-wear fashion for the modern woman.
She arrived on the fashion scene when feathers, lace and ostentatious beads were favourites, and proceeded to re-invent couture using new materials, like jersey, for outfits that were suitable for everyday wear yet still elegant. With original illustrations and images from celebrated photographers, such as Cecil Beaton, Bronwyn Cosgrave traces the story of Coco Chanel's iconic designs and glamorous, racy life.
In 1921 Coco opened her Chanel boutique in Paris - still a destination store today - and launched her first perfume, Chanel No.5. Perhaps her most important contribution to the fashion world was the simple, much-imitated 'little black dress' which made its debut in 1926. Other landmark creations include the Chanel suit and the quilted handbag. A testament to her lasting influence, these legendary designs remain as popular today as when they first appeared.
Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades. Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.
Shocking, witty and eccentric, the designs of Elsa Schiaparelli are among the most innovative and influential in the history of fashion.
Black gloves with golden fingernails, buttons shaped like lips, trompe l'oeil images, brightly coloured zips and perfume bottles in the shape of a torso would not be out of place in fashion today, but they were created by Schiaparelli in the 1930s.
A true original, she collaborated with artists such as Salvador Dali and Man Ray, pioneered the runway show and designed costumes for film-stars from Mae West to Marlene Dietrich. She used film and stage as a publicity vehicle for her label, and her advertising graphics were far ahead of their time. Through the photographs and illustrations of Vogue that championed Schiaparelli from the first picture of her revolutionary Bow-knot sweater in 1927 to the Surrealist Tears dress and Shoe hat of the late 1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli presents the enduring legacy of this daring and visionary designer.
Vogue, the international fashion bible, has charted the careers of designers through the decades. Its unique archive of photographs, taken by the leading photographers of the day from Cecil Beaton to Mario Testino, and original illustrations, together with its stable of highly respected fashion writers, make Vogue the most authoritative and prestigious source of reference on fashion. With a circulation of over 160,000 and a readership of over 1,400,000, no brand is better positioned to present a library on the great fashion designers of the modern age.