Icons Of Style

In 1911 the French publisher Lucien Vogel challenged Edward Steichen to create the first artistic, rather than merely documentary, fashion photographs, a moment that is now considered to be a turning point in the history of fashion photography. As fashion changed over the next century, so did the photography of fashion. Steichen’s modernist approach was forthright and visually arresting. In the 1930s the photographer Martin Munkácsi pioneered a gritty, photojournalistic style. In the 1960s Richard Avedon encouraged his models to express their personalities by smiling and laughing, which had often been discouraged previously. Helmut Newton brought an explosion of sexuality into fashion images and turned the tables on traditional gender stereotypes in the 1970s, and in the 1980s Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts made male sexuality an important part of fashion photography. Today, following the integration of digital technology, teams like Inez & Vinoodh and Mert & Marcus are reshaping our notion of what is acceptable—not just aesthetically but also technically and conceptually—in a fashion photograph. This lavishly illustrated survey of one hundred years of fashion photography updates and reevaluates this history in five chronological chapters by experts in photography and fashion history. It includes more than three hundred photographs by the genre’s most famous practitioners as well as important but lesser-known figures, alongside a selection of costumes, fashion illustrations, magazine covers, and advertisements.

"Women are into fashion, men are into style, style is forever" – Domenico Dolce Womenswear progresses in leaps and bounds, fueled by the readiness of women to wear what may at the time be perceived as the radical or outrageous. Not so menswear –menswear evolves, slowly. But from what? Behind nearly every item in the modern male wardrobe is a "first of its kind" – the definitive item, often designed by a single company or brand for specialist use, on which all subsequent versions have been based (and originals of which are now collector items in the booming vintage market). Icons of Men's Style examines, garment by garment, the most important and famous of these products – their provenance and history, the stories of their design, the brand/company that started it all and how the item shaped the way men dress today.

'Icons of Fashion' is a graphically exciting exploration of the history of fashion in the 20th century. Together with entertaining and insightful texts, double-page layouts divide the century into eleven stylistic periods.

Behind nearly every item in the feminine wardrobe there is a first of its kind that has spawned countless others. While the definitive example—often created by a single—has achieved icon status, its various reinterpretations, season after season, have become fashion staples. Take Coco Chanel's short, simple black dress first published in American Vogue in 1926, for instance. Vogue predicted that the LBD would become 'a sort of uniform for all women of taste' and, indeed, it proved to be one of Chanel's greatest contributions to fashion. Icons of Women's Fashion examines, item by item, the most influential and legendary garments and accessories – their provenance and history, the stories of their design, the celebrities who made them famous, and the various ways they have shaped how women dress today.

In Icons, Dodie Kazanjian, Vogue's irreverent art and fashion writer, takes us on a whirlwind tour of the ever-changing, always-glamorous world of style. Along the way, she uncovers how to get through life with "all the right stuff." Dodie discovers Victoria's Secret, follows Manolo Blahnik in search of the perfect shoe, questions whether diamonds are still a girl's best friend, guides us through hemline madness, and captivates us with foibles, fantasies, follies, and fervor of the world of style and high fashion.

Samuel J. Wagstaff Jr. (1921–1987) amassed an extraordinary collection of 26,000 photographs between 1973 and 1984, recognizing that photography was an undervalued art form on which he might have a profound impact as a collector. He was mainly attracted to photographs that stimulated his imagination, and his taste ran toward the idiosyncratic—images that surprised him chiefly because he had never seen them before. In choosing the 147 works reproduced in this volume, Paul Martineau selected masterpieces as well as images from obscure sources: daguerreotypes, cartes-de-visite, and stereographs, plus mug shots, medical photographs, and works by unknown makers. The latter category contains some of the most outstanding objects in the collection, demonstrating Wagstaff’s willingness to position unfamiliar images alongside works by established masters as well as underrepresented contemporary artists of the time, including Jo Ann Callis, William Garnett, and Edmund Teske. This book is published to accompany an eponymous exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from March 15 to July 31, 2016; at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, from September 10 to December 11, 2016; and at the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, ME, from February 1 to April 30, 2017.

Once a functional piece of workwear, denim has long since taken its place as a global style icon - but a small handful stand tall above the rest. This comprehensive collection looks at the most iconic denim ever created, from the original Levi's 501s, through the birth of Japanese denim and up to the modern brands that have made denim the streetwear staple it is today - Evisu, Nudie, Momotaro, the list goes on... With photography and detailed analysis throughout, Icons of Style: Denim traces the history of denim through its most iconic pieces, from rugged workwear to hand-crafted selvedge and beyond.