My Favourite Fashion Books

Growing up I’ve always had a large fascination with reading books and magazines, now I know we all know about all the famous fashion magazines (all the Vogues, Harpers Bazaar, Elle, Vanity Fair etc) but what about the books? Over the past year I have started to look into, and begun to collect some fashion books and I figured I would share some of my favourites.

Book 1:Grace a Memoir

This book is a collection of life stories from the Creative Director at Vogue, Grace Coddington. Now if you don’t know who she is I suggest you watch the September Issue on Netflix, a documentary on all the work that goes into Vogue’s September issue. This film largely focuses on Anna Wintour but also exposes you to new faces behind the scenes, prime example being Grace. After watching Grace take such pride in her work, and stand up to the oh so intimidating Anna (we all remember the Devil Wears Prada was based on her right?) I knew I had to find out more. Within this book Grace details where she grew up, her adventure to London to become a model, her first job at British Vogue, all the way to her journey to US Vogue. It is so intriguing to read back on all her memories of London in the 60s (which is where I would go if I had time machine), and to get her personal stories working in the industry. Comparing her to Anna Wintour, I find Grace’s bright personality and authenticity more relatable which is why I think she stood out in the documentary and why I enjoyed the book so much. And this is in no offense to the great Anna, I think she prides herself on intimidating others. Overall this is probably my favourite of the books I’m listing (partly because the cover is orange and that’s my favourite colour) because the others are more picture based, whereas this one tells a real story about different aspects of the industry.

Book 2:Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

This next book is one detailing the Spring 2011 exhibit at the 
Metropolitan Museum in New York dedicated to Alexander McQueen’s work. Firstly, this book is beautiful, with all the amazing photographs of his designs over the span of his career, but it also offers an insight to who he was for those who were too young to follow his work before he died. At the beginning of the book there is a Preface, and Introduction before all the fun and pretty pictures are shown. Within those pages you will find what inspired him, details into his past, and you will even get a better sense of who he was to the fashion world. McQueen being one of the fashion greats I think it’s important to educate yourself on how he impacted this industry, educating yourself on the history of fashion in general is important to give context to why trends exist now. After the Preface and Introduction comes all the beautiful photographs of some of his famous collections, along with quotes from McQueen himself on his inspiration, and ideas behind each one. This book also includes an interview with current creative director Sarah Burton, who worked closely with McQueen while he was still alive. McQueen was daring, he made his collections and shows real art pieces invoking intense emotions (not always positive). That is why he was so inspirational, he didn’t want to stick with the beautiful, elegant, traditional fashions. He wanted to show the world something darker, edgier, and raw.

Book 3: ManusX Machina

My third book is also based on an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, this one taking place in Spring of 2016. The theme of this exhibit however was not one based off a single designer but a relationship. That relationship being between fashion, humans, and machines. During the introduction, it details how the invention of the sewing machine changed fashion forever, before people were bound to hand sewing everything. Once the sewing machine emerged so did Haute Couture, custom fashion for those of high status. Fast forward and in comes “prêt-à-porter” or what we know as ready to wear, fashion generalized to fit as many people as possible. With the emergence of ready to wear, more machinery came alongside to produce large quantities of garments. The presence of human and machine in the fashion industry is obvious and this book shows you many examples of it in both Haute Couture, and ready to wear. It also details the history of certain practices for example the use Toiles, what Tailleur and Flou refers to, the use of Pleating and Folding, Lacework and Leatherwork, Embroidery, Featherwork, and Artificial Flowers. This book shows that the relationship of human and machine is not just one of the future, but one that has existed and flourished over many years. Each chapter showing you examples of machine integration from the past, as well as new and innovative ways of more recent years. Overall this book has some very interesting information behind the production of fashion (which is something I know very little about) which I loved reading about, and it had some beautiful and unique designs from so many influential designers. Another bonus about this one is the little book in the back featuring interviews with Sarah Burton, Hussein Chalayan, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, Nicolas Ghesquiere, Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, Iris Van Herpen, Christopher Kane, Karl Lagerfeld, Muiccia Prada, and Gareth Pugh. All the interviews detail how each designer incorporates hand and machine into their designs.

Book 4:Vogue the Covers

This last book is a glorified picture book (which I am totally okay with) of Vogue covers from the past. Can you guys tell I love Fashion History? This book is so fun to flip through, from the hand drawn, black and white covers from the 1800s, to the emergence of coloured drawings, to the first cover with a photograph etc. Looking through all of these covers may seem pointless but it really gives you an idea of what the times were like. What were the pictures of? What were the models wearing? Who was the model(s)? The book also has a short paragraph at the beginning of each time period (for example the 1800s-1900s) detailing what was going on at that time. For example, art, social movements, famous designs, famous designers etc. Even though this book doesn’t offer much in terms of reading, there is still lots to learn from this one, not to mention it makes a beautiful coffee table book I’m sure anyone would be interested in flipping through.