A selection of new Fantastically Fabulous Fashionable books and DVDs

Iris

391 APF

Originally released as a motion picture in 2009. An in-depth look into the life of fashion icon Iris Apfel, and her husband of over 60 years: the quick-witted, flamboyantly dressed 93-year-old style maven with an outsized presence on the New York & Palm Beach fashion scenes. Despite the abundance of glamour in her current life, Iris continues to embrace the values and work ethic established during a middle-class Queens upbringing during the Great Depression.

Paul Smith : gentleman designer.

391 SMI

An intimate and provoking portrait of "Lord Paul Smith", quirky designer and formidable businessman, through exclusive access to a poet of British fashion. 

Paul Smith has 400 shops and outlets in 35 countries, 12 clothing lines, 400 million Euros in yearly revenues, sales topping Chanel's, partnerships with Evian, Apple, and Austin, and prestigious bicycle and race car brands.

The secret of his success? Who is Paul Smith? How has he managed to get millions of men interested in fashion? How did a modest man from Nottingham become synonymous with elegance in men's fashion?

"This documentary celebrates 40 years of English fashion designer Paul Smith's success and how he built his brand empire around English pop culture. Paul Smith has 400 shops and outlets in 35 countries, partnerships with Evian, Apple, and Austin, and prestigious bicycle and race car brands. The film observes Smith as he creates his classic clothes with a twist for men and women from his London headquarters. How did this modest bloke from Nottingham become synonymous with elegance in men's fashion?"

Fear of fashion : critical cases on the anxiety of fashion

391.001 BUS

This book examines fashion as a phenomenon driven by fear as much as desire. It presents a collection of cases written during the course "Critical Fashion and Social Justice" at Parsons School of Design, which investigate the dynamics that propel aesthetic competition, anxiety, and bullying.

Fashioning Memory: Vintage Style and Youth Culture

391.001 JEN

The valuing of old clothes as vintage and the recollection of the sartorial past, whether through second-hand consumption or the wearing of new old-fashioned clothes, has become a widespread phenomenon. This book illuminates sartorial and bodily engagements with memory and time through the temporal and nostalgic potency of fashion, and what this means for contemporary wearers.
Based on in-depth ethnographic research including participant observation and interviews with sixties enthusiasts in Germany, who relocate British mod style into the twenty-first century, Jenss examines the practices and experiences that are part of the sartorial remembering of the sixties, from hunting flea markets and eBay, to the affect of material and mediated memories on vintage wearers.
Jenss offers unique insights into the fashioning of time, cultural memory, and modernity, tracing the history and current appeal of vintage in fashion and youth culture, and asking: what kind of experiences of temporality and memory are enacted through fashion? How have evaluations of second-hand clothes shifted in the twentieth century? Fashioning Memory provides a unique insight into the diverse use of fashion as a memory mode and asks how style is remembered, performed, transformed, and reinvested across time, place, and generation.

Experimental fashion : performance art, carnival and the grotesque body

391.008 GRA

Experimental Fashion traces the proliferation of the grotesque and carnivalesque within contemporary fashion and the close relation between fashion and performance art, from Lady Gaga's raw meat dress to Leigh Bowery's performance style. The book examines the designers and performance artists at the turn of the twenty-first century whose work challenges established codes of what represents the fashionable body. These innovative people, the book argues, make their challenges through dynamic strategies of parody, humour and inversion. It explores the experimental work of modern designers such as Georgina Godley, Bernhard Willhelm, Rei Kawakubo and fashion designer, performance artist, and club figure Leigh Bowery. It also discusses the increased centrality of experimental fashion through the pop phenomenon, Lady Gaga.

Fashion v sport

391.4796 SAL

This cutting-edge book takes a fresh look at the fascinating relationship between the global industries of fashion and sport and accompanies an exhibition at the V&A. Stunning images from sport, advertising, street fashion and the catwalk illustrate the take of prominent sportsmen and women, designers, creative directors, anthropologists and journalist on this popular subject. The book explores how the influence of fashion and sport extends from high performance textiles developed for competition, to high-end fashion and finally, through the filter of adapted advertising and magazine imagery, to the consumer, who adopts and adapts the styles to make their own unique fashion statements.

Couture unfolded : innovative pleats, folds and draping in fashion design

646.4072 GIA

Working from the simplest possible form the book addresses all major dimensional techniques, shows how they are related and gives examples of variations both traditional and modern. This book can be considered as an encyclopaedia of folding manipulates, explaining step by step the world of folds and how to apply them in practise. This title teaches readers to get folding finishes for a unique and special customisation in fashion. The explanations about the different types of pleating and diagrams are very clear and easy to follow, showing the stages of construction and the finished garments. So this title includes an analysis of the use of fold in fashion throughout history and also a helpful tutorial using 30 examples from some of the most innovative and avant-garde designers in fashion today.

Aware : art fashion identity.

391.008 GSK

Through clothing, we celebrate or suppress identity, indicate allegiances and communicate our positions, aspirations and desires. Little wonder, then, that so many contemporary artists are invested in exploring the role of clothing in the construction of self and society. "Aware: Art Fashion Identity" reflects on these artists and their work, and what it says about our physical covering and our constructed personal environments. Essayists Gabi Scardi, Lucy Orta and Joanne Entwistle consider issues of belonging, nationality, displacement and political and social confrontation in the artwork of Yinka Shonibare, Sharif Waked, Alicia Framis, Meschac Gaba, Dai Rees and Vito Acconci. Personal accounts of the role of clothing are drawn out through the work of Helen Storey, Marie-Ange Guilleminot and Claudia Losi, while the art and designs of Hussein Chalayan, Gillian Wearing and Andreas Gursky offer a platform for a discussion of the connection between fashion, clothing and performance.

Wear your chair : when fashion meets interior design

745.401 GRI

Wear Your Chair was originally developed as a multidisciplinary design course by Griffin and Collins, chairs of fashion design and interior design departments. Realising that students were visual learners, they saw the necessity of teaching students to be aware of design in its many forms and applications. They envisioned a course that would appeal to a variety of design majors. The book draws upon the many historic precedents of designers overlapping several design principles, such as Paul Poiret who designed clothing, furniture and textiles. The ultimate goal of this text will be to increase students' understanding of the significant, subtle, and often subconscious roles that apparel and interior design play in our lives.

Designing with smart textiles

746.04 KET

If you want to understand, and be a part of, the creative revolution in materials design, then Designing with Smart Textiles is the complete toolkit you need to get started. Beginning by introducing the terminology and key applications, the book goes on to examine the key design processes needed to develop interactive textile design concepts, with detailed projects and examples to help you apply these approaches in your own practice. Case studies and interviews with innovative designers introduce you to different artistic and technological practices, and demonstrate how world-leading researchers are creating new technologies, yarns, fabrics, and applications. Practitioners share unique insights into their processes, and Tech Tips so you can build on their research in your own work. Featured designers include: Yemi Awosile, Joanna Berzowska, Lauren Bowker, Marina Castan, Cute Circuit, Felecia Davis, Debbie Davies, Delia Dumitrescu, Martha Glazzard, Ramyah Gowrishankar, Intelligent Textiles Ltd., Sara Keith, Ebru Kurbak and Irene Posch, Barbara Layne, Eef Lubbers, Anna Persson, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Rose Sinclair, Mike Starbuck, Lynn Tandler, Paola Tognazzi, Sarah Walker and Linda Worbin

Stoppers : photographs from my life at Vogue

778.997492 VOG

The name Phyllis Posnick is synonymous with Vogue and the extraordinary fashion editorials the magazine's audience loves. Posnick is best known for creating photo editorials to illustrate the magazine's Beauty and Health articles, but cast off any ideas you have about close-ups of lips and eyelashes. Instead, picture models bathed in paint or posing next to cuts of fresh meat. This collection invites readers to glimpse the complex production process--and the collaboration and creativity--behind each extraordinary editorial. The book features images by a who's who of legendary photographers: Irving Penn, Steven Klein, Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Patrick Demarchelier, Tim Walker, Anton Corbijn and Helmut Newton. The book includes a foreword by Anna Wintour and is punctuated by Posnick's personal memories and irreverence.