Stylish books for favorite fashionistas
collection comes together from idea to fruition, but the new book about the House of Chanel by fashion writer Laetitia Cénac pulls back the curtains. This 240-page book contains hundreds of color illustrations by famed artist Jean-Philippe Delhomme detailing Karl Lagerfeld’s Spring 2019 collection — Lagerfeld’s last before his death. The book also highlights the work of the artisans who create the fashion house’s distinct style, the embroiderers, flower-makers, shoemakers and many others. Cénac weaves in the history of the iconic house with its contemporary collections.
In his memoir, artist Peter McGough tells of that almost-mythical time in New York’s pregentrified Lower East Side in the 1980s, when he fell into the East Village’s art scene, getting to know artists like
Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and frequenting mythic locations like Studio 54 and the Chelsea Hotel.
When McGough first moved to New York in
1980, he met and fell in love with another artist, David McDermott, and has collaborated with him ever since. McDermott and McGough became as wellknown for their work in painting and photography as much as their lifestyle, which embraced a Victorian aesthetic in all they did, including wearing top hats and detachable collars and living in a converted townhouse lit only by candlelight.
Their paintings were backdated to various decades, depending on the subject, adding a highly conceptual element to the work, and their photography was produced in historical processes such as cyanotype, gum bichromate and salt prints, leading the duo to became hugely successful, and showing in three Whitney Biennials.
Told with humor, McGough looks back at their professional and romantic partnership and struggles.
Few editors have had such an influence on men’s fashion as Jim Moore, GQ magazine’s famed creative director at large. For nearly 40 years, Moore shaped modern men’s fashion, discovering new designers, highlighting trends and giving fashion advice and critiques. The book contains 250 of Moore’s legendary fashion photographs that showcase in an eye-popping manner the magazine’s most memorable covers, many in a double gatefold. It’s not simply a look book of cool covers and celebrities but also includes Moore’s commentary and shows the evolution of men’s style through the decades. Classic covers include a 1980s “American Gigolo”-era Richard Gere and Kanye West, who does the forward for the 352page book.
From the 1970s until his death in 2016, New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham captured
New York street style almost daily. A new book by the newspaper chronicles through his eyes not only how fashion changed over nearly 50 years, but also how people and culture changed. The book focuses heavily on style — it includes essays and contributions from Anna Wintour, Guy Trebay and others — but also on important moments, such as the 1980s New York transit strike, the rise of casual Fridays and President Barack Obama’s inauguration. The 384-page book contains famous Cunningham photographs that ran in The New York Times and many neverseen-before images of how he captured life.